Construction of Victoria’s first wave power unit completed

Victoria looks set to become the second state in Australia to install a grid-connected wave power system, with the completion of a prototype unit to be installed off the state’s south-west coast on later this year.

BioPower Systems said on Monday it had finished constructing its prototype bioWAVE unit: a 26 metre high steel structure that, when installed below the surface of the ocean, sways back and forth with the movement of the waves.

The NSW-based company said the installation site – near Port Fairy – was now in the final stages of preparation for the arrival of the completed unit, with the onshore electrical equipment in place and divers working on subsea power and data cabling.

The $21 million project, supported by an $11 ARENA grant and state government funding, aims to test the patented technology in the high wave energy environment of the Southern Ocean, and then move it towards commercialisation.

ARENA CEO Ivor Frischknecht said the design of the bioWAVE – technology that BioPower had been working on since 2006 – had been inspired by undersea plants.

“The oscillating motion activates hydraulic cylinders to spin a generator, with the power transported to the shore via a subsea cable,” he said in a statement on Monday.

“If successfully installed, it will be the second ARENA supported wave energy device supplying energy to a major Australian grid, feeding 250kW of renewable energy into the National Electricity Market.”

Frischknecht added that the project offered a good illustration of how new renewable energy generation ideas require substantial time, effort and cost to shape them into functional, commercial propositions.

“The bioWAVE pilot is on track for installation in November 2015 and is expected to operate for at least 12 months, with testing throughout and an independent performance assessment at the conclusion,” he said.

“This data will inform the design of a larger 1MW commercial-scale bioWAVE unit, planned as the next phase of development for the technology.”

BioPower chief Timothy Finnigan said the prototype’s installation was part of a new era of renewable energy development.

“These technologies have been advancing quite quietly over the past 10 years or so, slowly solving the problems – not just us, but our other colleagues around the world,” Dr Finnigan said.

“Just in the last year or two, we’ve started to see some successes at scale with grid-connected devices going in.

“So now it’s just a matter of refining the engineering and getting the cost down, and then I think we’ll be into a new era of ocean supply for renewable energy.”