How could Protean ever be a competitor for CETO? The CWE device...

How could Protean ever be a competitor for CETO? The CWE device is designed to cater for normal scale utilities and has the capacity to serve microgrids as well. What is the size range of a microgrid? Probably 5 to 30 MW. Sometimes a piece of string can be longer but if it is very short it becomes fluff. Is it worthwhile designing a new shaped tinny to carry overseas cargo when we know that bulk carriers already have the advantage of scale?

Protean could at best only be used in picogrids. Posters on the POW board want to push management to apply for ARENA grants but don’t seem to realise that ARENA is a serious agency that couldn’t possibly justify supporting toy manufacture. It is not a matter of “filling in a few forms” and expecting a cheque for $1M to come in. (This is quite aside from the fact that Turnbull wants to exterminate ARENA.)

Ever since the first announcement in August 2014 Protean has been lauded as absorbing energy from 6 degrees of freedom. No one from management nor posters on POW has ever explained or questioned how this is an advantage. Water wave particles move in (vertical plane) circular orbits which are described as heave and surge in common parlance. What contribution do the other 4 degrees of freedom make?

Have you scrutinised the diagrams of a deployed Protean unit? It has three fine cables attached to a weight on the seafloor. What could you expect to happen on a reasonably wild night when the waves are not perfectly sinusoidal? Among other things, I could see an easy tangle those cables. (Imagine a rotation.) If you have a microgrid array of, say 15MW, untangling 15 000 unit cables might be some work. Survivability is one of the most serious of considerations; at your peril you could lose all your plant in one wild night.

When I was younger I used to make UFOs that flashed aery lights and generated chilling noises in the night sky. Hence I love gadgets and I will look forward to the deployment at Bunbury in the next few weeks.

Juke