Carnegie Wave Energy plans to deploy a 3MW array in 2016 with the option to expand it to 10MW. It says it expects its latest technology to be a “commercial breakthrough”.
Carnegie’s1MW CETO 6 is a fully-submerged technology that produces high pressure water from the power of waves and uses it to generate clean electricity. It can also produce desalinated clean water.
The company is the third customer to commit to Wave Hub in the last four months and the testing facility has up to 30MW of installed capacity in the pipeline.
Others have been reserved by UK-based Seatricity which plans to install a device this spring prior to building a 10MW array in the next two years, and Finnish multi-national utilities firm Fortum which has reserved a berth for an array of up to 10MW.
Kieran O’Brien, Carnegie’s executive director of European business development, said: “Securing a berth at Wave Hub provides Carnegie with a pre-developed site and installed grid connected infrastructure to test its CETO 6 commercial generation technology whilst leveraging off UK technical and commercial supply chain expertise in the heart of the marine renewables industry”.
The company is currently building a grid connected three unit wave energy array in Western Australia using its CETO 5 device. CETO 6 will have four times more generating capacity and the company said the Wave Hub site provided more energetic sea conditions.
Claire Gibson, managing director of Wave Hub, said: “We have seen an increase in demand from companies with advanced wave energy technology and have had to consider each of them carefully given we only had one berth remaining.”