Australian Maritime College electricity study rides wave of success

This is a good read.

http://www.themercury.com.au/news/t...s/news-story/dc33cf9c3b2d2c526de761597de95f9d

THE Australian Maritime College has entered a final push to kick start the commercial rollout of technologies for generating electricity from ocean waves.

Mark Hemer, from CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere, said a few more hurdles needed to be overcome before wave power, which had been lagging wind power by about two decades, could take off commercially.

Mark Hemer from CSIRO, left, Richard Manasseh, from Swinburne University of Technology, and Irene Penesis, from the Australian Maritime College. Picture: NICOLE MAYNE
The effort – to find ways to extract maximum energy from waves, to understand environmental consequences and to develop methods for assessing a wave farm’s feasibility – involves CSIRO, AMC, the Bureau of Meteorology and Melbourne’s Swinburne University of Technology.
They are being joined by two of Australia’s leading wave energy pioneers, BioPower Systems Pty Ltd and Carnegie Wave Energy, and funding body the Australian Renewable Energy Agency.
Experiments at the AMC, which include working out the best layouts for the deployment of multiple generator units alongside each other, are being conducted in the college’s wave pool.

Swinburne Associate Professor Richard Manasseh said a poor layout could cause generators to interfere with each other by absorbing or deflecting waves, preventing neighbouring units from fully utilising the waves.