Wave energy developer Carnegie Wave Energy Limited is continuing progress on the assembly and pre-deployment testing is at BAE Systems in Henderson south of Perth and at Carnegie’s onshore project site at Garden Island in Western Australia.
Current assembly and testing at Perth Wave Energy Project has been focused on the buoyant actuators, pumps, energy relief system, tethers, connectors and hydraulic pods, as well as the installation and testing of instrumentation equipment across all components of the plant and is progressing well.
Planned system commissioning will now not take place at the end of Quarter 2 in the interest of installing and commissioning the system in the optimum post-winter weather period. This also allows an extended period of pre-deployment testing prior to CETO unit installation.
Carnegie’s Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Dr Michael Ottaviano said,
“It’s important that the CETO 5 system is successful when installed. We need to be in a position to anticipate and respond quickly to the inevitable fault finding that will occur when you install a wave energy unit for the first time. Carrying out this sort of operation in winter could incur unnecessary risks.
Taking some extra time now will pay off once we are in the water and operating. There are too many examples in our industry where appropriate care hasn’t been taken at this stage of a project’s construction and Carnegie can learn from this.”
The extension of the assembly and pre-installation testing phase will likely continue through the southern hemisphere winter which will allow CETO unit installation and any initial fault finding to occur outside of the larger winter swells. The availability of suitable weather windows is constrained in winter by consistent large swells. These reduce significantly in September and October, thereby increasing the opportunity and lowering the risk for any required intervention.