Wave energy project sets world record

Carnegie Wave Energy has announced the successful completion of the CETO 5 Perth Wave Energy Project, which has achieved over 14,000 hours of operation over the past 12 months — the highest amount ever recorded for the global wave energy industry.

The $40 million CETO 5 project has used an array of three offshore wave power generators to provide clean electricity and potable desalinated water to Australia’s largest naval base, HMAS Stirling, on Garden Island in Western Australia. Supported by $13.1 million of funding from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA), the project was the first array of wave power generators to be connected to an electricity grid worldwide.

Carnegie completed the operational phase of the project at the end of 2015 — having achieved over 14,000 hours of deployment across all four seasons of its 12 months of operation, collected a wealth of key engineering and environmental data, validated its computational models and met all requirements of the funding agreements. All three CETO 5 units were safely retrieved and brought back to shore for inspection, analysis and decommissioning ahead of activity on the next-generation CETO 6 Project.

As part of Carnegie’s internal analysis of the project, the company conducted a performance assessment which was based on respected industry standards for performance assessment of wave energy converters. The performance assessment found excellent correlation between the modelled performance and the measured performance. A subsequent external review, carried out by ARENA’s independent technical engineering firm, confirmed that the project met all its objectives.

“Carnegie would like to thank both ARENA and the Western Australia Government for their support of the Perth project,” said Carnegie Managing Director and CEO Dr Michael Ottaviano. “The government grant support for the project has enabled Carnegie to deliver Carnegie’s first CETO wave energy array here in Western Australia. The project achieved a number of world firsts and paves the way for the delivery of Carnegie’s commercial product platform, the CETO 6 generation.”

“ARENA is proud to help local companies, like Carnegie, 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.”

A final report for the CETO 5 project will be publicly available from July at the ARENA website. According to Frischknecht, the data generated and the lessons learned throughout the project will help “other wave energy projects advance faster and overcome development hurdles”.

Image caption: The CETO 5 Perth Wave Energy Project in operation.