The electricity produced by the power plant would be used to make hydrogen and oxygen, HS once said.
In August 1972: One of the latest proposals for using solar radiation for energy production is a solar power plant floating in the ocean. Until now, the sun has only been used for energy production in a few experimental plants built on land.
In solar power plants, the sun’s light is concentrated with the help of large mirrors, resulting in enough heat to develop steam
However, for large-scale energy production, solar radiation must be collected from such a wide area that the construction costs of facilities on land may become too high.
Oceanic a solar power plant floating on the surface has been considered at least worth exploring.
According to the plan, the facility would be located in the southern parts of the Pacific Ocean. The radiation-collecting mirrors would cover an area of almost 50 square kilometers, which would be enough for a 1,000 megawatt plant. The power would therefore be about twice as great as the power of the nuclear power plant to be built in Loviisa.
The energy produced by a power plant floating in the middle of the ocean must be transferred to population centers on the mainland.
The undersea trunk cable has been deemed uneconomical, and therefore the energy transfer has been solved in a rather special way: with the electricity produced by the power plant, water is broken down into hydrogen and oxygen, which, when liquefied, are transported to the mainland on tankers built for this purpose.
Oxygen can be used as an industrial raw material, for example, and hydrogen is burned in a conventional power plant.
Like the plan may seem very artificial, after all there are many intermediate steps before the produced energy can be consumed. However, at least initially, the costs are estimated to be quite tolerable.
In addition, it must be taken into account that the price of energy will rise in any case, because the energy sources used until now are starting to run out.
The oil will apparently run out within a few decades, and the coal fields that are unused for now are deep.
You can’t have high hopes for nuclear power plants either, because it is already clear that the availability of reasonably priced uranium resources is limited. For this reason, it is worth investigating even proposals that seem fanciful.