Carnegie unveils new design for first commercial wave plant

Perth-based Carnegie Wave Energy has unveiled the latest design of the CETO technology it proposes to use in its 2MW demonstration project off Garden Island near Fremantle – the first in the world to deploy multiple machines.

After 12 months of research, Carnegie has bumped the size of its submerged buoy to 11m in diameter for CETO 5 (see image below), up from 7m in the CETO 3 version that was used in a trial off Garden Island last year.

Carnegie Wave Energy says this will triple the capacity of the machine to 240kW, and it says that further refinements of the hydraulics will ensure that it can produce power more than 97 per cent of the time in the best wave sites. The hydraulics are complex but crucial, as the buoy is designed to move with the motion of the ocean, driving pumps that pressurise water and then send it to hydro-electric turbines located onshore.

The company expects to begin construction of its Perth Wave Energy Project in the first quarter of 2013 and make its first power sales into the grid in the fourth quarter of 2013. The project recently attracted a $9.9 million grant from the federal government’s Emerging Renewables Program and a $5.5 million grant from the WA government, and the company is currently negotiating a power purchase agreement with local offtakers.

Later this year, the company is expecting that a pilot unit of its CETO 4 technology – which has a 10m diameter – will be deployed on Reunion Island by French energy giant EDF and French construction company DCNS.