Carnegie raises $5.3 million for solar, battery, wave

Perth-based clean energy firm Carnegie Clean Energy announced this week it has successfully raised $5.3 million in investments to grow its solar, battery, and wave energy businesses.

The funds were raised through a share purchase plan announced in late-April, in which eligible shareholders were offered between $2,400 and $15,000 worth of shares in Carnegie at 3.0 cents per share for the purpose of raising up to $6 million.

Carnegie says that the raised funds will go towards working capital to deliver on its existing wave and solar and battery storage microgrid projects, as well as to further develop its contract and project pipelines, and to further expand the business.

“We thank our shareholders for their support in the capital raise,” said Carnegie managing director Michael Ottaviano this week.

“We will now use this new capital and our existing funds to accelerate our businesses towards financial sustainability.”

Carnegie started out life as Carnegie Wave Energy and was focused solely on developing its ground-breaking CETO Wave Energy Technology.

However, in late 2016 the company announced it was changing its name to Carnegie Clean Energy following the acquisition of leading solar and battery microgrid developer Energy Made Clean.

Beyond Australia’s shores, Carnegie has also turned its CETO technology into global subsidiaries in the UK, Ireland, and Chile – the former of which is responsible for delivering the CETO 6 Wave Hub Project in Cornwall.

“Over the past 24 months Carnegie has expanded its business to become a diversified renewable energy company,” Dr Ottaviano said earlier this year.

“We continue to develop our proprietary wave technology but are also now a leading designer, constructor and operator of utility solar, battery and hybrid power systems.

“We have achieved this at a time when this sector is at the start of a period of rapid growth. Our ability to be innovative both technically and commercially creates the opportunity to accelerate the growth our business to achieve and sustain profitable ongoing operations within the next 12-24 months.”

The company has also been busy building smaller solar projects around Australia, but will soon divide its focus between the utility-scale solar market after it was awarded the right last year to develop the 10 MW Northam solar project in Western Australia.

More recently, Carnegie unveiled plans to build another 10 MW solar project in the south west of Western Australia, this time with a 10MWh battery storage addition.