DOI: 10.4121/16438386.v1
title: Data underlying the paper "Is bigger always better? Designing economically feasible ocean thermal energy conversion systems using spatio-temporal resource data"

description: The key datasets used and generated in the paper mentioned in the title (from now on "the paper").<br>+++ Temperature_Profile.xlsx +++<br><br>This file contains the processed surface and deep-sea water temperatures that were used as inputs for the off-design analyses of the OTEC system designs. Outliers are already removed in this data set. Outliers are data points that are 1.5 times the interquartile range away from the top or bottom of the box plot. The raw temperature data can be downloaded from the HYCOM database following the download instructions elaborated in the paper.<br><br>Column A: TimeShows the timestamp of the temperature data, from 01.01.1994 00:00 until 31.12.2012 21:00 in 3-hourly time steps.<br>Columns B-C, D-E, F-G, H-IThese pairs of columns show the surface seawater temperature at 20 m depth and deep-sea water temperature at 1,000 m depth for the four locations analysed in the paper, namely Jayapura, Tarakan, Ende, and Sabang.<br>Columns K - OShow the main statistics of the temperature files, including minimum, median, and maximum values of the surface and deep-sea water temperatures at each of the four locations.<br><br>+++ System_Designs_Ende_LC +++<br>This file contains the data for Table 4 in the paper, showing the system designs based on nine different configurations of seawater temperatures as design parameters. See sections 2.1 and 2.2 of the paper to learn more about the methods used to deduce the nine temperature configurations. The system designs are created using the temperature profiles from Ende and low-cost assumptions (LC). <br><br>Please note that we used the following sign convention:<br>Work and heat entering the system: positiveWork and heat leaving the system: negative<br><br>Rows 6 - 15: Energy balance and net thermal efficiency<br>Shows the energy balance and net thermal efficiency of the Rankine cycle on which the OTEC plant is based<br>Rows 6 - 14 show the heat flows to the evaporator and from the condenser, the work from the turbine and to the pumps, as well as the losses.<br><br>Row 15 shows the net efficiency and is calculated as follows:Row 15 = |Row 14|/Row 6<br><br>Rows 17 - 28 show the exergy analysis including exergy inflow from the warm surface seawater and the exergy destruction in the system components. <br><br>Row 28: Net Exergy EfficiencyRow 28 = |Row 27|/SUM(Row 17 to 19)<br>Rows 29 to 30 show the carnot efficiency and second law efficiency.<br><br> Rows 32 to 34 show the mass flows of working fluid (here ammonia or NH3), warm water (WW) and cold water (CW).<br>Rows 36 and to 37 show the temperature differences between heat exchanger inlet and outlet of the warm water (WW) and cold water (CW).<br>Rows 39 to 44 show the dimensions and properties of evaporator (evap) and condenser (cond), namely the heat exchanger area A, saturation temperature T and saturation temperature p of the working fluid.<br>Rows 46 to 49 show the inner diameter and the number of required seawater pipes. Note, that the number of outlet pipes is the same as the number of inlet pipes, so if for example the number of WW pipes is 6, there are 3 inlet pipes and 3 outlet pipes for the warm water.<br>+++ Net_Power_Profiles.xlsx +++<br>Shows the net power output of the turbine in [kW] for 30 years (1994 - 2023) in 3-hourly time steps at the location in Ende. The values are negative as in accordance to the sign convention described above. The file contains the data for Figure 4 in the paper. There are three sheets in the file containing the net power profiles for configuration 1, 2, and 9. Please note that the four-weeks downtime period mentioned in section 2.5 is not included here yet.<br><br>Column A: TimeShows the time of the year as the x-th 3-hour interval of the year.<br>Columns B - AEShow the annual net power profiles for the years 1994 until 2023.<br>Column AFShows the average net power output at the x-th 3-hour interval of the year.<br>Column AGShows the standard deviation of the net power output at the x-th 3-hour interval of the year<br>Row 1Shows the headers for each column<br>Rows 2 to 2929Shows the net power output in 3-hour time steps. Note that rows 474 to 481 represent the 29th February. For leap-years, these rows are filled with data, for non-leap-years, these rows are NaN.<br>Row 2930Shows the sum of values under each column. For the annual electricity production in [kWh], the values in this row must be multiplied by factor 3 because of the 3-hourly time interval.<br>