Carnegie Wave joins CSIRO wave energy study

ASX-listed wave energy developer Carnegie Wave Energy Limited has joined forces with the CSIRO, lending its industry-leading CETO technology to a wave resource mapping and development project.

The project, which, as of an announcement made today, is being funded to the tune of $1.3 million by the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA), will work towards developing a wave atlas and improving the assessment of wave energy extraction on the marine environment.

It will do this by monitoring Carnegie’s Perth Wave Energy Project, off Garden Island in Western Australia, using in-water oceanographic sensors, which will measure the impacts of energy extraction, allowing CSIRO to establish best practice guidelines for assessing the potential impact of wave energy plants.

“This project builds on CSIRO’s previous work and is an important step forward in enabling more wave energy projects to come to the fore in Australia,” said ARENA CEO Ivor Frischknecht.

“Such a tool would be of tremendous value for an emerging industry and for anyone assessing the viability of wave power. Australia has some of the best wave resources in the world and we’re only just starting to tap into the ocean’s potential to produce reliable, renewable energy.”

Carnegie’s CETO wave energy technology differs from other such devices in that it operates under water, instead of floating on the surface. Power can be generated by the system either offshore or onshore, with the fully submerged buoys able to drive seabed pump units, delivering high pressure fluid onshore via a subsea pipe to standard hydroelectric turbines, generating zero-emission electricity.

The high-pressure water can also be used to supply a reverse osmosis desalination plant, replacing or reducing reliance on greenhouse gas-emitting, electrically-driven pumps usually required for such plants. Alternatively, the movement of the buoys can drive pumps and generators offshore that are contained within the buoy itself with power delivered back to shore through subsea cables

Carnegie Wave project development officer Tim Sawyer said the CSIRO project offered tremendous value to the West Fremantle-based company, as well as to the broader industry in Australia, providing an accessible tool to chart the nation’s enormous untapped wave energy resource.