Dec 03

Renewable News 3rd December

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Carnegie
Carnegie’s wave energy CETO 3 deployment and testing activities are on track to be completed in 2010 as scheduled. The CETO 3 single unit deployment and testing at Garden Island will consist of an autonomous CETO unit, hydraulic energy dissipation system and instrumentation buoy. The hydraulic system and instrument buoy avoids, in the first instance, the investment required for a physical connection to shore for the initial single unit installation.

Kepple Prince
Portland wind tower manufacturer Keppel Prince could move its business interstate because of the Victorian Coalition Government’s wind farm policy. The company recently won a $27 million contract to build towers for the Macarthur wind farm, which is expected to create hundreds of jobs.

General manager Steve Garner says parts of the Coalition’s wind farm policy, like the minimum turbine set-back distance, could mean fewer new wind farms are built. He says Keppel Prince could relocate to New South Wales. “If Victoria does stall and we don’t see a future in it then obviously we’ve got to look where the business is and I think the next area of growth will be somewhere in NSW,” he said.

turbine tower manufacture

Contact Energy
Contact Energy has won its appeal to build a $400 million wind farm near Dannevirke, leaving local opponents “deeply disappointed” after a $150,000 legal battle.

The court has ruled in favour of the company building a wind farm on the Puketoi Range, southeast of Dannevirke, but has granted a lapse time of just five years – half that applied for. The consent allows Contact to build 58 turbines up to 125 metres high, or 52 turbines 150m high.

Gamesa
Gamesa will develop wind farms with a capacity of 324MW in Mexico with developer Eolia Renovables.

Aquamarine Power
Scotland’s Burntisland Fabrications (BiFab) has nabbed a £4m ($6.2m) contract to build Aquamarine Power’s second-generation wave energy device, further fuelling its momentum in the marine renewables sector.

Dow Chemical
The Dow Chemical Company will power its largest manufacturing facility in Brazil with eucalyptus wood biomass. Dow signed a supply agreement with Brazilian firm Energias Renovaveis do Brasil to help install and operate the biomass generation plant. The plant is expected to reduce the site’s carbon dioxide emissions by 180,000 metric tons annually and conserve 200,000 m3 of natural gas daily.

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Oct 28

Renewable News 28th October

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NSW Household Solar
The NSW government has dramatically reduced the household rebate for its solar energy scheme in an effort to avoid a $2.5 billion blow out. The gross feed in tarriff would be reduced from 60c to 20c/kWh.

Carnegie
Wave Energy developer Carnegie unveiled the buoyant actuator (BA), a key component of its commercial scale CETO 3 unit. Once deployed, Carnegie’s CETO 3 will be the first commercial wave energy unit operating in Australia.

Brightsource
NRG Energy Inc. said it plans to spend $300 million on BrightSource Energy Inc.’s planned 392 MW solar thermal power station in Ivanpah, California.

Construction of the plant has already begun, and is forecasted for completion in 2012. The project will use pole-mounted mirrors, or heliostats, to reflect the sun’s rays to boilers mounted on top of towers, vaporizing the water inside with temperatures of than 538 degC. The steam produced will be piped to a turbine generator.

Kenya
Kenya plans to start drilling for geothermal steam deposits at Menengai near the southwestern town of Nakuru in December, By June 2011, the East African country plans to drill six wells in the area, using two drilling rigs. Kenya plans to seek as many as four geothermal power-plant developers to exploit deposits in Menengai.

solar thermal tower

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Oct 06

Renewable News 6th October

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Country Energy
Country Energy is assessing sites for a feasibility study to build a 50kW non-urban solar plant in New South Wales (NSW).

The solar plant will be the state’s first non-urban plant planned at the Bega Valley on the far south coast, according to Country Energy.

bega solar farm

Suzlon
Suzlon Energy said it plans to install 800 MW of wind energy in South Africa over the next two years and the company has set up an office in Johannesburg to pursue the opportunities.

Carnegie
While investors wait for the CETO wave energy technology to be commercialised and installed in utility scale, Carnegie has signed a formal collaboration agreement with Sustainable Energy Authority, Ireland’s Ocean Energy Development Unit to jointly develop projects at the Belmullet wave energy test site, as well at other locations off Ireland.

The three year deal marks a milestone in the commercial roll-out of Carnegie’s Ceto wave power device, which until now has only been tested off Australia, with a further project planned for the French-owned Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean.

Carnegie has also awarded a vessel charter contract to North Fremantle-based Total AMS Pty Ltd (“TAMS”), for the purposes of the CETO 3 installation activities at its wave energy site to the west of Garden Island off Perth in WA.
The installation barge will provide a working platform for the CETO 3 installation
equipment and system components. Prior to commencing the installation the barge will be fitted out with a 50 tonne crawler crane, air compressor, generator and dive operation support equipment.

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Oct 05

Renewable News 5th October

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Hot Rock
Hot Rock Ltd has applied for grants totalling up to $9 million with the Victorian government to expedite advancement of its flagship Koroit geothermal project in southwest Victoria. The applications would complement the federal government’s geothermal drilling grant of $7 million awarded in August 2010.

hot rock drilling

Project Finance
Australian banks, highly dependent on offshore capital, will face increasing international scrutiny of their lending practices - particularly, their exposure to the coal industry.

Greenpeace’s study of domestic lending to Australia’s coal industry, by Dutch economic consultancy Profundo, is a shot across the bows for our major banks which, like their international peers, are under growing pressure to limit funding to the key industries that are wrecking the climate.

Profundo’s survey of loans over the last five years by seven Australian banks - comparing finance for existing and new coal-fired power stations, coalmines and coal port infrastructure, with finance for renewable energy projects - shows we are still heading in the wrong direction.

Resource Tax
The Gillard goverment is yet to decide on whether the tax rate for certain alternative coal technologies will be 22.5 or 40 per cent.

A consultation paper released by the government says coal extraction will be subject to 22.5 per cent mineral resource rent tax and coal-seam methane to the 40 per cent petroleum resource rent tax.

The varying rates under the proposed MRRT and PRRT could have an impact on the competitiveness of various fuels for generation and other industrial uses. Lets hope the government gets this right this time…

Wave Energy
A LACK of government support for the fledgling wave-energy industry is forcing Australian companies to increasingly invest overseas despite having the world’s best wave resource off our coastline.

Several Australian wave-energy proponents have started projects in such places as Hawaii, Central America and Ireland, saying Australia’s risk-averse tendency is holding back investment.

Ali Baghaei, the chief executive of Oceanlinx, said that while the federal government has been relatively supportive of more mature renewable energies such as wind power, its policy settings needed to support developing technologies in order to get the right mix of power generation.

Mike Ottaviano, the managing director of the Australian Securities Exchange-listed Carnegie Wave Energy, is pushing ahead with plans to establish a wave-power project at Garden Island, 50 kilometres from Perth.

One of the four grants was awarded to US-based Ocean Power Technologies and Leightons, which together won $66.5 million to construct a 19-megawatt wave farm near Portland, Victoria. A total of $65 million from the fund was not allocated.

Elemental Power Industries - EPi - Elemental Projects
EPi has experience in the development of wave projects within Australia. We have been involved with numerous wave projects under development. Including site identification, site studies, plant sizing, feasibility studies, configurations, estimating, business models and integration with other equipment like desalinisation plants. Visit the website www.elementalpower.com.au for more information on our services.

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Sep 08

Renewable News 8th September

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Suzlon
Suzlon Energy Ltd. is having problems selling part of its Repower AG unit, Handelsblatt reported, citing unidentified people in the industry.

Suzlon is said to have priced a 25 percent stake in its Repower Systems AG unit at about 500 million euros. The stock market currently values Repower at about 1 billion euros, the newspaper said.

suzlon turbine

India
India plans to install 20 gigawatts of solar capacity by 2022 in three phases. The country added 8 megawatts of solar power capacity that is fed to the grid as of Jan. 1, compared with a target of 50 megawatts for the five years ending March 2011, according to the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy.

India may need as much as $10 billion in investments to install 10 gigawatts of solar thermal power over the next 12 years, the head of an industry group said. “Raising funds will be a challenge,” Anil Kumar Lakhina, chairman of the Forum for the Advancement of Solar Thermal, said at a conference in New Delhi today.

While some funds will need to be raised overseas for equipment and components, India’s power industry overall has attracted foreign direct investment of $5 billion in the past 10 years, Lakhina said.

solar thermal parabolic trough

Wave Hub UK
The U.K. installed a wave-power test facility off the coast of Cornwall, southwest England, to allow developers including Ocean Power Technologies Inc. to gauge the viability of their equipment.

The 12-ton “Wave Hub” was placed in waters 55 meters (180 feet) deep on Sept. 3, and four lines of cable were attached over the past two days, according to a statement today from the South West England Regional Development Agency. The hub will act as a socket for devices that turn wave energy into electricity.

“This ground-breaking project will strengthen the U.K.’s position at the forefront of the wave energy sector,” U.K. Science Minister David Willetts said in the statement. “The U.K. is already leading the way, with 25 percent of the world’s wave and tidal technologies being developed here.”

The U.K. estimates that energy from the waves and tides could power 15 million homes by 2050 and create 16,000 jobs by the 2040s. The Wave Hub project overcame opposition from surfers who feared it might lower the height of waves along the Cornish coast. Wave Hub is located off the coast at Hayle, 20 miles from Newquay, Britain’s surf capital.

The 42 million-pound project has four berths, each allowing developers to test groups of wave-power equipment. The first devices are expected to be installed next year, and New Jersey-based Ocean Power agreed to take the first berth, according to today’s statement.

wave hub project

US Tax Relief
The White House will propose allowing companies to fully deduct the cost of equipment such as tractors. President Barack Obama will call for an expansion of a tax incentive designed to encourage businesses to invest in equipment, as part of a push to bolster economic growth before midterm congressional elections on Nov. 2.

The White House will propose allowing companies to fully deduct the cost of equipment such as tractors, wind turbines, computers and solar panels, said an administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity ahead of the president’s announcement this week.

In 2008 and 2009, companies could deduct 50 percent of their costs using so-called bonus deprecation. The latest proposal would increase the tax break to 100 percent through the end of 2011 and make it retroactive to Sept. 8, 2010, the official said.

Obama is planning to outline the $30 billion proposal in an economic speech on Sept. 8 in Cleveland, one of several ideas the White House plans to introduce to encourage job growth and boost the economy.

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Aug 19

Renewable News 19th August

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Crowlands windfarm approved
Pacific Hydro’s Crowlands wind farm, has been approved by the Brumby goverment for 72 turbines. The approved wind farm has a proposed generating capacity of 172 megawatts.

The wind farm is located 25 km north-east of Ararat in Victoria.

Emu Downs Wind Farm Sale
The sale process for Emu Downs wind farm in WA will begin next week as the owners look to capitalise on the strong interest in one of the largest wind farms in the country.

The wind farm is a 50/50 JV between the Griffin Group and QLD’s Stanwell corporation. The sale also comes with Badgingara an approved 130MW stage 2 wind farm proposal.

Based on a typical industry valuation prices of $2.5 to $2.75 million per MW could be expected for the 80MW wind farm commissioned in 2006.

The wind farm located 200km north of Perth, near Joanna Plains, consists of 48 Vestas 1.67MW turbines and cost around $180 million to build in 2005/6, constructed by Vestas via an EPC contract.

Bandgingara is located 5km north of Emu Downs on 22,000ha site reportedly to be also owned by Rick Stowes empire. The wind farm was estimated to generate around 430GWh/yr from 130MW. The wind farm will require the delayed Western Power HV transmission line upgrade adjacent to the site, to proceed before it could be constructed.

emu downs wind farm

CSIRO has faith in wave power
CSIRO researchers say half of Australia’s electricity needs could be met by harnessing just 10 per cent of the energy generated by waves near the southern Australian coastline.

wave energy

Infigen
Analysts are weary of Infigen’s planned revision of production forecasts. Greg Dover, CFO of Infigen said the revision was always planned and was all part of business as usual.

Mr Dover did however say on the topic of REC prices “Macarthur will partially satisfy AGL’s own REC obligations, the long term shortfall in REC obligations still exists across the board”

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Aug 11

Carnegie receives NSW licence

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Australian Wave Energy developer Carnegie Wave Energy Limited (ASX:CWE) is pleased to announce it has been granted a wave energy licence from the Government of New South Wales for a potential wave energy project site south of Sydney, off Eden, in New South Wales.

The three year licence was awarded yesterday by the New South Wales Minister for Lands, the Honorable Tony Kelly MLC, under section 34 of the Crown Lands Act 1989, and allows Carnegie to further explore the potential for wave energy off Eden with a view to developing a commercial-scale CETO wave energy project in NSW. Carnegie will continue to work closely with the NSW Government as it progresses its site investigations.

“Combined with our existing licences in Western Australia, South Australia and Victoria, and our international interests with EDF EN, this further bolsters Carnegie’s project pipeline.” said MD Dr Michael Ottaviano. The licence allows Carnegie to establish the viability of the resource and identify the best specific site for a wave power project. It also provides a pathway to secure a commercial project lease subject to completion of required approvals and permits. Eden was selected after consideration of a number of NSW sites and provides an ideal future entry point for Carnegie into the NSW renewable energy market.

ceto wave energyceto wave energy

The Eden license is on top of the recent the licenses granted to Carnegie for investigations in Victoria including Phillip Island, Portland and Warrnambool.

CWE shares are trading close to a 52 week low and market analyst believe Carnegie needs to deliver a new project to get its shares moving. Carnegie shares have slumped after they missed out on government funding.

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May 27

Victorian Wave Energy Licence Award

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Australian Wave Energy developer Carnegie Wave Energy Limited (ASX:CWE) is pleased to announce it has been granted an investigation licence and option to lease from the Victorian Government for three potential wave energy sites off Victoria at Portland, Warrnambool and Phillip Island.

• First wave energy company to be awarded Victorian Wave Energy Site Licences;
• Adds to WA & SA sites as possible Commercial Project Locations.

CETO Carnegie wave energy

Tenure was awarded by the Victorian Minister for Environment and Climate Change under section 138 of the Land Act 1958, to explore the potential for wave energy at the three offshore sites with a view to developing a commercial demonstration facility in Victoria.

Carnegie has been working consistently with the Victorian Government since 2008 to secure seabed tenure and will now be progressing site investigations. Carnegie has also provided advice to the Victorian government in relation to the Victoria Government Marine Energy Policy which is currently being developed and aimed at encouraging new renewable energy.

Carnegie had previously been awarded consents under the Coastal Management
Act 1995 to undertake marine surveys and trials at the three locations.
Carnegie Wave Energy’s Managing Director Dr Michael Ottaviano said, “We are pleased to have progressed our consents to licences and now have a clear pathway to lease an area of seabed for a commercial project. These sites add to our Australian commercial site pipeline in WA and SA.”

According to a report by RPS MetOcean commissioned by Carnegie, Victoria has an estimated near-shore wave energy resource of 18,000MW – almost double the state’s total installed power generation capacity. Furthermore, taking into account the proximity of current power transmission infrastructure, approximately 20% of Victoria’s current power needs could be met by harnessing wave energy.

About CETO
The CETO system distinguishes itself from other wave energy devices by operating out of sight and being anchored to the ocean floor. An array of submerged buoys is tethered to seabed pump units. The buoys move in harmony with the motion of the passing waves, driving the pumps which in turn pressurise water that is delivered ashore via a pipeline.

High-pressure water is used to drive hydroelectric turbines, generating zero-emission electricity. The high-pressure water can also be used to supply a reverse osmosis desalination plant, replacing greenhouse gas emitting electrically driven pumps usually required for such plants.

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May 20

Oceanlinx barge sinks

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The $5 million wave-to-energy barge, one of the first of its kind in the world, sank below the surface of the water over the weekend near Woolongong after heavy seas tore it from its moorings on Friday and swept it into the rock wall.

Hopes of saving the ill-fated 170-tonne Oceanlinx barge were dashed yesterday after it was discovered parts of the hull smashed into pieces and scattered across the seabed at Port Kembla.

Oceanlinx wave energy generator

A dive team inspecting the 170-tonne wreck spent hours searching for the damaged metal remnants, combing through masses of thick seaweed at the base of the eastern break wall.

Oceanlinx spokesman Colin Parbery said engineers and the project’s insurers met with the Port Kembla Port Corporation yesterday to “formulate a way forward”.

The barge carrying experimental an wave energy generator was at the forefront of renewable marine technology and had fed power back to the Integral Energy grid since March this year.

Last year Oceanlinx won a $3 million Climate Ready federal grant to help develop the device, all of which had been allocated.

———————————————–
Elemental Power Industries - EPi - Elemental Projects
EPi has experience in the development of wave projects within Australia. We have been involved with numerous wave projects under development. Including site identification, site studies, plant sizing, feasibility studies, configurations, estimating, business models and integration with other equipment like desalinisation plants. Visit the website www.elementalpower.com.au for more information on our services.

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Dec 10

Wave Energy Site for Garden Island WA

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The wave energy developer Carnegie Wave Energy (ASX: CWE) & WA Government sign wave energy license, which allows the installation of commercial scale CETO unit off Garden Island. This will be the first commercial scale wave power unit deployed in Australia.

The license gives Carnegie three years access to the seabed around Garden Island, 30km from Perth, for the initial 5MW commercial demonstration plant.

Carnegie CETO wave energy buoy and pump

The activities to be undertaken under the license form part of Carnegie’s 5MW commercial demonstration project supported by $12.5m of State Government Low Emissions Energy Development (LEED) funding.

Carnegie has recently announced its 5MW Western Australian project is on track with the first commercial scale autonomous CETO unit scheduled for deployment early next year.

Recently, the company has carried out a detailed marine geophysical survey using a combination of seismic refraction, sidescan sonar and bathymetry systems. The survey determined the composition and features of the seabed across the development site to support mooring design and inform environmental baseline assessments.

A specialist jack-up rig, required for the installation is on its way from the North West Shelf. The rig will start laying the under water footings to anchor the submerged buoys and pumps that will generate power from waves.

See The Australian, 9th December 2009, for the full article.

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