"Drving down the cost of clean energy technologies"
The following table from the MIT masters thesis of Shylesh Muralidharan shows the high capacity factor of OTEC as well as its competitive levelized capital cost with respect to other technologies. (Although not shown in this table the paper points to a study that shows a deep water condenser architecture can bring down the installed capital cost of a 100 MW plant ship from 4000 $/kw to 2650 $/kw.)
The thesis also shows that doubling plant size leads to a cost/kW reduction of OTEC plants by approximately 22%.
Using CO2 as a working fluid for the deep water condenser design allows for plants of gigawatt capacity.
Extrapolating for a 1 GW plant of the deep water condenser design, it would cost $86*2650/4000*78/100*(1-(.22*(200/800))) or 42 $/MWh for the lowest levelized capital cost for all energy sources but for combined cycle natural gas and would be the cheapest of all renewables.
It is this capacity to scale to low cost combined with the environmental dividends inherent in the production of energy from this source that makes it truly transformational.
(Seeking collaborators to capitalize on this environmentally and economically effective prescription.)