doing the math

I'll preface this by saying that I have a reasonably large steak (for me) in CNM and I fully expect it to get the REDP grant and see the benefits reflected in a better share price.

However, when I do the maths on the cost of wave power, it seems very high:

50 MW plant costing $300M
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- lets assume it runs at 90% efficiency due to maintenance, sub par waves,etc
- so over a year it generates (0.9 X 50 X 24 X 365) = 394,200 MWhrs
- lets round this to 400,000 MWHrs from the pilot plant per year


- If we assume 10% cost of capital and depreciation over 10 yrs (I'm just making this up - no idea of the life expectancy of a CETO III buoy), the plant needs at least $60M pa to self fund. Then there are other operating costs. No idea again on this but even if it was ZERO, CNM will need to sell energy at $150 per MWhr to be sustainable.

Contrast this with HSA geothermals who are saying approximately $100 / MWhr

Does anyone have any comments. Will full scale plants and a commercialized manufacturing process for CETO III buoys significantly reduce development costs?

Will wave power be a niche market where other renewables are unviable / capacity fully exploited?