Hot on the heels of switching on the world’s first commercial, grid-connected wave power array, WA company Carnegie Wave Energy has announced it has reached financial close on the five-year, $20 million loan facility that will part fund its CETO 6 project.
The loan facility, provided by the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC), will be put towards the construction of the CETO 6 wave power generation unit, alongside an $11 million grant already received from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA).
Carnegie says that conceptual design for the CETO 6 Project is also progressing well, and is approaching completion, ahead of the detailed design phase.
Construction, deployment and demonstration are the next focus for the project. The CETO 6 array site will be located around 8km further offshore from the current Perth Project, the company says, with the exact location yet to be determined.
Once installed, the CETO 6 array is expected to be yield some three times more energy than the existing Perth Project array.
Carnegie Chief Financial Officer, Aidan Flynn, described reaching financial close on the CEFC facility as “a watershed moment” for Carnegie, as the first time the company had achieved a pure debt finance deal.
“(This) now gives Carnegie the certainty of capital and cash flows to build this important commercial version of the CETO technology,” Flynn said. “it also importantly paves the way for project finance for subsequent CETO projects.”
