Swell Of Support For Wave Energy Pioneer

Ocean wave energy pioneer Dr Tom Denniss’ Oceanlinx company has been awarded A$2.95m from the Federal Government’s Climate Ready Program, The grant, which will be matched 1:1 by the Company’s own funds, will be dedicated to the design and testing aspects of the next generation of Oceanlinx’s technology.

Founded as Energetech by local Illawarra lad Denniss in 1997, Oceanlinx is now an international renewable energy company based in Australia. It has developed a unique, commercially efficient system for extracting energy from ocean waves and converting it to electricity, and can utilise that energy to produce clean, fresh water from brine.

Recently (Feb 2009) the company successfully re-deployed its full scale wave energy conversion unit at Port Kembla (south of Sydney). First deployed in 2005, the unit has been undergoing planned refurbishment and modifications over the past few months. Work is now in progress to re-commission the unit and continue the test and trial program.

Oceanlinx’s core patented technology is an Oscillating Water Column (OWC) that, compared to other OWC technologies, offers major improvements in the design of the system, the patented Denniss-Auld turbine, and in construction technique.

Ocean waves contain enormous amounts of energy, and as this energy passes the Oceanlinx device, the water inside the OWC (open underneath the waterline) rises and falls, compressing and displacing the air inside, driving it past a turbine which is housed at the narrowest point in the chamber.

Since the OWC chamber narrows, the air is accelerated to its highest velocity as it passes the turbine, allowing for maximal extraction of the energy. The oscillatory wave motion causes a similar oscillatory airflow through the chamber, and the turbine converts energy on both the up and down stroke, courtesy of the variable pitch turbine which offers mono-directional spinning direction despite the bi-directional airflow. The turbine drives an electrical generator.

Recent landmark achievements include:

December 2006: Energetech completes a permanent installation of its Port Kembla Wave Energy Plant

February 2007: £6.0 million fundraising with institutional investors

April 2007: The company changes its name to Oceanlinx

November 2007: £5.9 million investment from institutional and venture capital investors.

September 2008: $A16.0 million investment package from European venture capital investors.

The company has a diversity of current contracts and projects in places as far afield as Portland (Victoria, Australia), Port Kembla (NSW), Cornwall (UK), Rhode Island (USA), Namibia, Hawaii and Mexico.

The Port Kembla Wave Energy Barge is a full scale prototype which is used to demonstrate various concepts and better understand the underlying physics of wave energy conversion. Production of volumes of electrical energy is a secondary consideration of this barge and it is not currently connected to any grid or public network and no energy has been discharged to the grid. Energy that has been produced to date has been discharged to load banks.

The generator rating is 250kW with a 1 minute over-rating of 500kW. This is the first generation technology and the new generation will be much higher and more efficient.

View Port Kembla installations in high resolution on Google Earth

Both wave energy devices developed and installed by Oceanlinx off Port Kembla - can be viewed in high resolution on Google Earth. It is believed that Oceanlinx is the first wave energy developer to have two different devices in the water concurrently. The bottom mounted MK 1 device can be viewed at 34° 27’ 07.6” S, 150° 54’ 06.8” E. The floating MK 2 device (now brought back into port) is positioned at 34° 28’ 16.7” S, 150° 54’ 56.5” E. Simply type these coordinates into the Fly To section, in the upper left hand corner of the Google Earth page.

Dan Stojanovich

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Wave Energy Conversion Unit at Port Kembla
Picture courtesy Oceanlinx

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