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Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) Datasets

Published by National Renewable Energy Laboratory | Department of Energy | Catalog Last Checked: April 25, 2026 at 08:43 AM | Dataset Last Updated: April 28, 2025 at 05:29 PM
The data presented here were collected from the Ocean Thermal Extractable Energy Visualization (OTEEV) project. The OTEEV project focused on assessing the Maximum Practicably Extractable Energy (MPEE) from the world's ocean thermal resources. This project explored the feasibility of deploying Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) plants to harness temperature differences between warm surface waters and cold deep seawater for renewable power generation. The resulting datasets - cold water depth, delta T, net power, plant spacing, sea surface temperature, and seawater cooling - capture critical environmental and engineering variables needed to assess OTEC site suitability, system efficiency, and regional deployment planning. Data were processed and converted to shapefile format by NREL for the OTEEV project - see linked "Ocean Thermal Extractable Energy Visualization Final Technical Report" resource below. For more information on the specific visualization datasets provided here, see section 7.1 of the linked report. Note: The shapefiles presented here were originally created as a part of the MHK atlas, which has been deprecated in favor of the Marine Energy Atlas. For more up to date datasets, please see the "Marine Energy Atlas" linked resource below.

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Complete Metadata
@type dcat:Dataset
accessLevel public
bureauCode 
                                            [
  "019:20"
]
contactPoint 
                                            {
  "fn": "NREL Maps",
  "@type": "vcard:Contact",
  "hasEmail": "mailto:maps.help@nlr.gov"
}
dataQuality 
                                            true
description The data presented here were collected from the Ocean Thermal Extractable Energy Visualization (OTEEV) project. The OTEEV project focused on assessing the Maximum Practicably Extractable Energy (MPEE) from the world's ocean thermal resources. This project explored the feasibility of deploying Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) plants to harness temperature differences between warm surface waters and cold deep seawater for renewable power generation. The resulting datasets - cold water depth, delta T, net power, plant spacing, sea surface temperature, and seawater cooling - capture critical environmental and engineering variables needed to assess OTEC site suitability, system efficiency, and regional deployment planning. Data were processed and converted to shapefile format by NREL for the OTEEV project - see linked "Ocean Thermal Extractable Energy Visualization Final Technical Report" resource below. For more information on the specific visualization datasets provided here, see section 7.1 of the linked report. Note: The shapefiles presented here were originally created as a part of the MHK atlas, which has been deprecated in favor of the Marine Energy Atlas. For more up to date datasets, please see the "Marine Energy Atlas" linked resource below.
distribution 
                                            [
  {
    "@type": "dcat:Distribution",
    "title": "1. Ocean Thermal Extractable Energy Visualization Final Technical Report",
    "format": "HTML",
    "accessURL": "https://doi.org/10.2172/1055457",
    "mediaType": "text/html",
    "description": "Final technical report for the Ocean Thermal Extractable Energy Visualization project. This report describes the ocean thermal resource and the conventional methods for extracting energy from
it. It then takes the reader through each step of the project, detailing the data processing, modeling and
validation efforts employed. This is followed by a discussion of OTEC plant spacing and sustainability.
Finally it delivers the results of this resource assessment and development of the visualization tool to be used in bringing those results to the public in an interactive presentation."
  },
  {
    "@type": "dcat:Distribution",
    "title": "3. Marine Energy Atlas",
    "format": "HTML",
    "accessURL": "https://maps.nrel.gov/marine-energy-atlas/",
    "mediaType": "text/html",
    "description": "The Marine Energy Atlas is a free, interactive mapping tool that helps viewers understand and quantify the power of wave, tidal, river, ocean current, and ocean thermal resources across the U.S. Users ranging from marine resource developers to local planners can use the tool to visually layer multiple variables or download data from specific regions, years, and time resolutions."
  },
  {
    "@type": "dcat:Distribution",
    "title": "2. License.rtf",
    "format": "rtf",
    "accessURL": "https://mhkdr.openei.org/files/622/License.rtf",
    "mediaType": "application/octet-stream",
    "description": "Licensing information for use of the OTEC dataset. "
  },
  {
    "@type": "dcat:Distribution",
    "title": "Cold Water Depth.zip",
    "format": "zip",
    "accessURL": "https://mhkdr.openei.org/files/622/cold_water_depth.zip",
    "mediaType": "application/zip",
    "description": "These shapefiles represent seasonal (winter, summer, annual) average cold water depth recordings. The cold water is defined by locating the depth that leads to the greatest average annual net power at each location when depth and its corresponding delta T are input into the power equation. This optimization balances power gained by obtaining colder water from deeper locations against power lost by transporting the water upward through a longer pipe. Input depth and temperature values are obtained from the Hybrid Coordinate Ocean Model (HYCOM) and are reported at discrete depth levels. The cut-off for maximum cold water depth is 1000 m."
  },
  {
    "@type": "dcat:Distribution",
    "title": "Delta T.zip",
    "format": "zip",
    "accessURL": "https://mhkdr.openei.org/files/622/delta_t.zip",
    "mediaType": "application/zip",
    "description": "These shapefiles represents seasonal (summer, winter, annual) average delta T estimates. Delta T represents the difference in temperature (degrees C) between the warm and cold water sources used by an OTEC plant at a specific location. Warm water is defined uniformly as water at a depth of 20 m, while cold water is defined for each point by locating the depth that leads to the greatest annual net power when each depth and delta T along the thermocline are input into the power equation. This optimization balances power gained by obtaining colder water from deeper locations against power lost by transporting the water upward through a longer pipe."
  },
  {
    "@type": "dcat:Distribution",
    "title": "Net Power.zip",
    "format": "zip",
    "accessURL": "https://mhkdr.openei.org/files/622/net_power.zip",
    "mediaType": "application/zip",
    "description": "These shapefiles represent seasonal (summer, winter, and annual) average net power estimates. The OTEC Plant model predicts the net power production at a specific location, given three inputs: surface temperature (degrees C), depth (m), and difference between warm surface water temperature and cold deep sea water temperature (degrees C) at the given depth, relative to the surface temperature.

In order to normalize values for the purposes of visualization of the OTEC resource around the world, a baseline plant design was used. The baseline 100MW Net Power design has been optimized for conditions indicative of the Hawaii OTEC resource. As such, power output as described by the results of this study is not optimized for local conditions (except in parts of Hawaii), but does provide guidance for site selection. Given the nominal plant power output of 100MW based on a competitive cost of electricity (Hawaii), any output exceeding this value represents significant potential. A large area of predicted 100 MW+ net power exists in many locations around the world, especially in areas with high energy costs."
  },
  {
    "@type": "dcat:Distribution",
    "title": "Net Power Grid Points.zip",
    "format": "zip",
    "accessURL": "https://mhkdr.openei.org/files/622/netpowergridpts.zip",
    "mediaType": "application/zip",
    "description": "This point shapefile contains the HYCOM+NCODA point locations used in the report. These grid points contain the annual average attribute values for ocean thermal energy conversion used in the report and analysis. Please see the full report for details on the data (chapter 2) and how these points were used to create the map layers (chapter 7).

Values equal to -9999 are null."
  },
  {
    "@type": "dcat:Distribution",
    "title": "Plant Spacing.zip",
    "format": "zip",
    "accessURL": "https://mhkdr.openei.org/files/622/plantspacing.zip",
    "mediaType": "application/zip",
    "description": "This shapefile represents estimated plant spacing distances. The estimates shown here were obtained considering the availability of cold water at a particular location based on two criteria, the deep-water velocities from HYCOM and a layer-depth constraint estimated from the global OTEC potential of 5 TW. A simple mass budget approach allows estimation of plant spacing; the estimates were further constrained to be no smaller than 3.6 km, based on infrastructure considerations."
  },
  {
    "@type": "dcat:Distribution",
    "title": "Sea Surface Temperature.zip",
    "format": "zip",
    "accessURL": "https://mhkdr.openei.org/files/622/sea_surface_temperature.zip",
    "mediaType": "application/zip",
    "description": "These shapefiles represent seasonal (summer, winter, and annual) average sea surface temperature recordings. The sea surface temperature is the temperature of the warm water source used by an OTEC plant. This is defined to be near the sea surface at a depth of 20 m, the approximate depth of a warm water intake pipe."
  },
  {
    "@type": "dcat:Distribution",
    "title": "Seawater Cooling.zip",
    "format": "zip",
    "accessURL": "https://mhkdr.openei.org/files/622/seawater_cooling.zip",
    "mediaType": "application/zip",
    "description": "These shapefiles represent the seasonal (summer, winter, and annual) depth profiles to reach water at three different temperature measurements (8, 14, and 20 degrees Celsius). Sea water cooling can be used for industrial or residential cooling needs where heat must be rejected. A typical resource for direct air-conditioning applications is no warmer than 8 degrees C, which has been established as a minimum value of interest for this study. Water at temperatures between 8 C and 20 C can be used to supplement air conditioning processes, or to reject heat from many other low temperature industrial processes. Water temperatures above 20 C were not considered for this investigation as cost savings begin to break down as sea water temperature nears ambient temperatures. Depth profiles for three water temperatures of interest: 8 C, 14 C and 20 C were established to aid selection of optimal sites for sea water cooling. A cool shallow resource just off the coast where a need may exist presents significant opportunity for energy and cost savings."
  }
]
identifier https://data.openei.org/submissions/8398
issued 2014-11-25T07:00:00Z
keyword 
                                            [
  "HYCOM",
  "MHK",
  "NCODA",
  "OTEC",
  "OTEEV",
  "cold water depth",
  "conversion",
  "data",
  "delta T",
  "depth profile",
  "energy",
  "grid points",
  "hydrokinetic",
  "marine and hydrokinetic",
  "net power",
  "ocean",
  "ocean energy",
  "ocean thermal energy conversion",
  "plant spacing",
  "processed data",
  "sea surface temperature",
  "seawater cooling",
  "thermal"
]
landingPage https://mhkdr.openei.org/submissions/622
license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
modified 2025-04-28T17:29:01Z
programCode 
                                            [
  "019:009"
]
projectLead Hoyt Battey
projectNumber EE0002664
projectTitle Ocean Thermal Extractable Energy Visualization (OTEEV)
publisher 
                                            {
  "name": "National Renewable Energy Laboratory",
  "@type": "org:Organization"
}
spatial 
                                            "{"type":"Polygon","coordinates":[[[-180,-83],[180,-83],[180,83],[-180,83],[-180,-83]]]}"
title Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) Datasets

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