Tasmania’s Australian Maritime College is to test a series of wave prototypes to assess the performance and impact of arrays on the marine environment.
The devices will be grouped together in an array for a series of experiments under various wave conditions in the model test basin during the six-week trial.
The information gleaned from these experiments will be used to develop a free online modelling tool to assess the ocean wave energy resource in a particular area.
The project is a collaboration between AMC and Swinburne University of Technology with industry partners BioPower Systems and Carnegie Wave Energy, and supported by funding from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency.
Arena chief executive Ivor Frischknecht said: “Wave arrays enable economies of scale, so determining how devices interact in the ocean will be crucial to the commercialisation of wave power.
“Testing at AMC could one day lead to wave energy arrays being deployed off Australian coastlines or islands, feeding affordable renewable energy to onshore users.”
A second project, the Australian Wave Energy Atlas project, is being led by CSIRO in collaboration with the Bureau of Meteorology and AMC, with industry partners Carnegie and Biopower.
The Atlas project aims to make baseline information on the available marine energy resource more accessible.
Image: Australian Maritime College tests (University of Tasmania)
Tasmania tests for wave devices
Australian Maritime College to assess impact on marine environment
By EBS