Carnegie Wave Energy has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Australian government’s power utility Western Power to deliver a renewable energy island microgrid project for Garden Island, Perth.
The Garden Island Microgrid Project (GIMG) project will consist of the CETO 6 Project currently in progress and the existing reverse osmosis desalination plant currently operating on Garden Island but will add an additional 2 MW of solar photovoltaic (PV) power generation and sufficient energy storage to allow interaction with the electricity grid, Carnegie’s press release reads.
Michael Ottaviano , Carnegie’s CEO, said: “Western Australia presents itself as an attractive option to locate wave power projects in coastal communities and avoid building and maintaining long transmission lines. Additionally, Carnegie’s island power projects will invariably involve integrating CETO with other renewable energy power sources, desalination plants, diesel generation and increasingly energy storage. This project will also be a great opportunity to demonstrate a real world, wave integrated microgrid system to our island customers.”
Paul Italiano , Western Power CEO, added: “Western Power sees significant potential for long-term economic benefits in increasing the amount of decentralised energy generation located near the edges of the grid. We will provide engineering expertise to assess the technical challenges of enabling a two way flow of power between a large integrated network and a microgrid that has a mix of renewable sources of generation, including wave energy.”
According to Carnegie Wave, the GIMG Project will be developed with the support of the Australian Department of Defence and will be funded through a combination of equity, debt and grant funding. The initial step is a detailed design phase with construction likely to occur in 2016 so that it occurs in advance of CETO 6 construction.
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Image: Carnegie Wave