Waterborne noise due to ocean thermal energy conversion plants

Public law reflects a United States national commitment to the rapid development of Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) as an alternate energy source. OTEC plants extract the stored solar energy from the world’s tropical seas and in so doing pose a potential for altering the character of the ambient noise there. The sources of noise from an OTEC plant are analyzed in the context of four configurations, two of which were built and tested, and two which are concepts for future full‐scale moored facilities. The analysis indicates that the noise resulting from the interaction of turbulence with the seawater pumps is expected to dominate in the frequency range 10 Hz to 1 kHz. Measured radiated noise data from the OTEC‐I research plant, located near the island of Hawaii, are compared with the analysis. The measured data diverge from the predicted levels at frequencies above about 60 Hz because of dominant non‐OTEC noise sources on this platform. However, at low frequency, the measured broadband noise is comparable to that predicted.