Im not a fan of jumping feet first into an energy generating system that takes energy from the global ocean pump, without a DETAILED study into the affect it would have on the pump.

How much of the generated energy is used for pumping the cold water, and how much is lost in transportation from the generators themselves?
This sounds like a neat way of generating energy, but at the same time it seems highly doubtful that it's practically doable.

So, as far as I've understood, they are essentially creating energy by cooling the warm upper waterlayer, and heating the lower waterlayer.

As charliem pointed out, the climatic effect of this has to be thoroughly studied before it is even partially viable. Isn't the climate of every coastal country severely dependent on the flow of the major warm and cool watercurrents? As well as most marine life migratory patterns?

Seems like a very dangerous force to mess with. I would by far prefer for the effort to be focused on nuclear- or sun-based alternatives.

The currents most likely wouldn't be affected noticably more than the wind is affected by wind power generators.
But just like the poor wind generator preformance, this seems to simply be too expensive an quite frankly ineffective to be of any real use. The way they claim that 40 of these power stations could generate enough electricity for Puerto Rico most likely doesn't take into consideration any other factor than the optimal generation capacity of each of those power stations.

The way they generate electricity is not in question, it seems like a great way to do it. However, if most of it is used to power the process and transport the product to the mainland then it's a lost cause. Would be interesting to hear from someone with knowledge of this and hear how they propose to solve such issues.

*eco

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

hmm, *eco?

Adding video to channels (Eco) - requested by dag.

hmm, *eco?!