CONVERSATION WITH BENJAMIN MARTIN OTEC PLANT OPERATOR

Benjamin Martin the Operator of the Kumejime Power Plant on Kumejime Island in Okinawa.

Kumejime Power Plant

How does your day begin. How does it end? 

                It depends on what’s going on. The OTEC Facility itself runs automatically and autonomously.

                This means we don’t need to be at the plant 24/7. I do a daily visual inspection on workdays which takes about 15 minutes.

                I also periodically do more in-depth inspections. If I find something wrong, we fix it. Since we’re near the ocean and open, this generally mean combatting corrosion such as painting. On a painting day, I’m there from morning to night either removing rust or painting. On the occasion where equipment such as piping is to be exchanged, we generally hire a contractor and I supervise. We also do regular electrical inspections carried out by experts. 

                If we want specific data or want to simulate certain circumstances, I can control the facility manually through either a switch room or our computer control.   In that case, I’m just sitting at my desk pressing buttons.

                As a demonstration plant, one of our purposes it to show the facility and we do get a lot of tour requests. When visitors come, we generally spend about an hour introducing ‘ The Okinawa Deep Ocean Water Research Center ‘(ODRC) and our OTEC demonstration with a mini-model, as well as showing around outside. In some cases, we’ll   Introduce the other deep ocean water industries.

Can you tell us how you became involved in this type of work?

                It was luck. I was working here on Kumejima when the OTEC plant was established. Kumejima Town asked if I was interested in working at the plant as a local staff. I agreed.

How many members does your Ocean Thermal Energy Association have?

                We now have more than 510 members and observers from 48 countries and regions.

Are you seeing growth?

We have seen steady growth in membership over our two years. We are an all-volunteer organization so our activities and output are limited, however, I believe we have been able to form a community of OTEC Stakeholders.

What kind of outreach are you doing? 

We operate the otecnews.org website, hold regular meetings, support webinars and events, and keep our members up to date via email and SNS. We’ve created some materials for our members to use, and would like to more in the future.

What countries have shown the most interest and what age groups?

Many of the tropic and subtropic communities are interested, and we do have a student contingent. In terms of actual project development Japan, Mauritius, Malaysia, Nauru, and an England-based venture have been most active recently. We are starting to see more international-level organizational interest from government and private sector.

How can people in Hawaii help advance the OTEC idea?

OTEC for Hawaii is challenging as there is a contingent of the population reluctant to endorse any new development, especially in the ocean. There are ways to limit the visual impact of an installation (spar-type so its mostly submerged), which will likely be the best use case for Hawaii. In this respect, more scaling is still required. In the short term, discussing OTEC with leaders and politicians towards creating the opportunity, such as through federal support, or through support for an international cooperation project would be the swiftest approach towards getting the technology ready for Hawaii.

I hope this is helpful to you.

Sincerely,

Benjamin Martin