Australia’s first wave energy array project sets world record
Australian ingenuity backed by the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) is once again leading the pack. As the Perth based Carnegie Wave Energy Project breaks a world record, completing 14,000 cumulative operating hours – the highest ever recorded for the global wave energy industry.For the past 12 months, the CETO 5 project has used an array of three off-shore wave power generators to provide clean electricity and potable desalinated water to Australia’s largest naval base, HMAS Stirling, on Garden Island in Western Australia.
Supported with $13.1 million of funding from ARENA, this now complete $40 million project was the first array of wave power generators to be connected to an electricity grid, worldwide. In a country surrounded by powerful oceans with more than 80 per cent of our population living on the coast, wave technology has the potential to not only be part of our future energy solutions in remote and on-grid communities, but an exportable global solution too. ARENA CEO Ivor Frischknecht said the CETO 5 project is a prime example of how, with the right stewardship and support, improvements can be made on previous iterations of a technology, to progress it along the innovation chain towards commercialisation.
“ARENA is proud to help local companies, like Carnegie, develop new renewable energy solutions that have the potential to change the way the world generates electricity. We do this by providing Australian innovators with the support they need during the critical RD&D period, when patient funding is essential.”“The CETO 5 project demonstrates what this support can do for a technology’s development: assisting Carnegie to propel its technology’s development from an independently assessed Technology Readiness Level (TRL) of five, to a seven out of nine, in just three short years.”TRL is an internationally accepted measurement system used to assess the maturity level of a developing technology. For further information on TRL see http://go.nasa.gov/1OPJtq6.
“The data generated and the lessons learned throughout the CETO 5 project are being shared within the ARENA portfolio and the renewable energy industry more broadly, helping other wave energy projects advance faster and overcome development hurdles.”
