Citation: Lopez, G.; Ortega Del Rosario, M.d.l.A.; James, A.; Alvarez, H. Site Selection for Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion Plants (OTEC): A Case Study in Panama. Energies 2022, 15, 3077. https://doi.org/10.3390/ en15093077 Academic Editors: Kostas Belibassakis, Eugen Rusu and George Lavidas Received: 18 March 2022 Accepted: 13 April 2022 Published: 22 April 2022 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affil- iations. Copyright: © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). energies Article Site Selection for Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion Plants (OTEC): A Case Study in Panama Guillermo Lopez 1,2,3 , Maria de los Angeles Ortega Del Rosario 1,2, * , Arthur James 1,2,3 and Humberto Alvarez 4 1 Department of Mechanical Engineering, Universidad Tecnológica de Panamá, Panama City 0819-07289, Panama; guillermo.lopez2@utp.ac.pa (G.L.); arthur.james@utp.ac.pa (A.J.) 2 Research Group—Iniciativa de Integración de Tecnologías para el Desarrollo de Soluciones Ingenieriles (I2TEDSI), Universidad Tecnológica de Panamá, Panama City 0819-07289, Panama 3 Sistema Nacional de Investigación (SNI), Clayton, City of Knowledge Edf. 205, Panama City 0819-10280, Panama 4 Department of Industrial Engineering, Universidad Tecnológica de Panamá, Panama City 0819-07289, Panama; humberto.alvarez@utp.ac.pa * Correspondence: maria.ortega@utp.ac.pa Abstract: This research addressed a need for technical evaluation of the oceanic scenario of Panama for the use of Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC). Its bathymetry and location can potentially lead to the exploitation of OTEC, diversifying the energy matrix and helping achieve sustainability. Nevertheless, site selection for OTEC can be a complex task since it involves various alternatives, with different quantitative and qualitative criteria, which may conflict in some cases. Optimization and multiple criteria (MCD) methods have been used lately to address these issues; however, their use is still limited. Here, Analytic Hierarchical Analysis (AHP) is proposed as a MCD method for site selection. Six sites of interest were considered as the alternatives for a plant installment. These sites were chosen, excluding the environmentally and aboriginal protected areas. The quantitative criteria considered were surface and deep-water temperatures, coastline distance, gross and net efficiency. Those variables related to the efficiency, such as the water temperatures, can be considered the most influential, leading to Punta Burica, located on Panama’s Pacific coast, as the best option (96.17%). Keywords: Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC); site selection; multi-criteria decision (MCD); hierarchy analysis process (AHP); renewable energy 1. Introduction The sun serves as the main source of energy on the planet. The incident radiation is absorbed by the ozone in the stratosphere and much by the clouds. About 35% of it is reflected into space, and then 66% of the remaining energy is absorbed by the Earth’s surface. Considering that more than two-thirds of the Earth’s surface is hosted by water, the oceans represent the most prominent solar energy collectors and, thus, the largest global energy reservoir [1,2]. The most considerable ocean thermal energy is hosted near the Equator [3–5]. Ge- ographically, Panama is located in Central America, bordering the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean, between 7 ◦ and 10 ◦ North latitude and 77 ◦ and 83 ◦ West longitude. Therefore, Panama’s ocean scenario displays thermal energy resource potential [6–8]. How- ever, since Panama has a broad oceanic scenario, knowing its location is not enough to guarantee the sustainability of implementing marine energy exploitation, such as OTEC (ocean thermal energy conversion). OTEC technology uses the temperature difference between warm ocean surface waters and deeper cold waters. The zones that achieve adequate thermal differences to take advantage of the oceanic thermal resource are generally close to tropical areas, near the Energies 2022, 15, 3077. https://doi.org/10.3390/en15093077 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/energies