Australia’s Carnegie Wave Energy Project Sets World Record
Australia’s Carnegie Wave Energy Project has set a new world record after completing 14,000 cumulative operating hours, the highest ever recorded.
The news was announced by the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) this week, which provided $13.1 million in funding. The $40 million project uses CETO wave energy technology, and was the world’s first array of wave power generators to be connected to an electricity grid. For the past 12 months, the CETO 5 project has used an array of three offshore wave power generators to provide electricity and potable desalinated water to Australia’s largest naval base, HMAS Stirling, on Garden Island in Western Australia.
“ARENA is proud to help local companies, like [Carnegie Wave Energy Limited], develop new renewable energy solutions that have the potential to change the way the world generates electricity,” said ARENA CEO Ivor Frischknecht. “We do this by providing Australian innovators with the support they need during the critical RD&D period, when patient funding is essential.”
“The CETO 5 project demonstrates what this support can do for a technology’s development: assisting Carnegie to propel its technology’s development from an independently assessed Technology Readiness Level (TRL) of five, to a seven out of nine, in just three short years.”
Wave energy technology is the epitome of a no-brain solution for the world’s smallest continent/largest island, with more than 80% of the population living on the coast. As such, wave energy technology has benefited from generally positive support throughout the country, even when other technologies such as solar and wind were dismissed or criticized for taking government subsidies. Australia has long been a technological innovator across a wide spread of fields, and the Carnegie Wave Energy Project has the potential to not only be a local source of power, but also an exportable solution.
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Wonder if the buoyant oscillator or whatever the uppy / downy thing is called on these wave generators can be connected to an offshore wind turbine tower or anchor wire to have combine wind / wave power plants.
I think we need to throw in a cordless charging station for electric subs. Elon go’s down under.
Very interesting project, but with little detail. How much energy are we talking about here?
Carnegie website here. The project capacity is 1 MW. It looks as if the capacity of single units is 240 KW. They say the next generation will be 1 MW each. This is commercial scale.
Just possibly, Carnegie have cracked the reliability problem that has stymied previous efforts at wave generation. They have put all the moving parts underwater, a tough environment but stable and well understood. It’s the ocean surface’s mixture of oxygen and salt spray that kills machinery.
http://carnegiewave.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/CETO-6-Concept-Design_Open-BA_Low-Res-741×1024.jpg
1) – It is absolutely FANTASTIC good news to see wave/tide projects start being reported
2) Bit disappointed about the lack of statistics being reported here – nothing much about actual power, anticipated reduction in the cost of future installs, etc
3) 12 months = 8760 hours. How is the 14,000 being reported here calculated, and how has reliability been tracking?
4) What tentative conclusions can we draw about the future of this technology based on this project?
It appears to be still a concept;
http://www.hydroworld.com/articles/2016/02/carnegie-wave-energy-s-ceto-6-unit-generating-power-in-western-australia.html
It is fantastic, there certainly is a lot of energy in ocean currents!
That’s mark VI, the mark V was the one that’s done the hours.
I think it needs to last a bit more than 2 years to be considered ready for commercial deployment, but 2 years is a good start; most of the earlier designs were getting broken by the harsh ocean environment within less than 1 year.
With 3 units, I bet that that 14k is the sum of the 3. So on average each unit had 4,666 hrs so about 6 months. Since it does say “over past 12 months”. But the we are all guess, since the data is not there.
You are right they were installed at different times months apart as they were constructed and ready for installation
It’s still pre-commercial, so Carnegie are pitching to a select group of agencies prepared to subsidise the early-stage deployment, and to green venture capitalists. They have little incentive to release commercially sensitive information to the likes of us.
This is interesting. Might just change attitudes toward ocean energy.