Oceanlinx Limited Secures $4 Million in Government Grants for 1-Megawatt Pilot greenWAVE Energy Project

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Perth, Australia)--Following a much-awaited announcement, Oceanlinx Limited (Botany, New South Wales) has received funding approvals from the Victorian state government. Oceanlinx, formerly known as Energetech Australia Pty Limited, submitted an appeal to the Australian Centre for Renewable Energy in 2011 for a $7.2 million Pilot greenWAVE Energy project and received close to $4 million on July 5, 2012. Oceanlinx is now keen on moving ahead with the first phase of the Pilot greenWAVE Energy project.

However, according to Chief Executive Officer Ali Baghaie, the company is still working on getting the remaining $3.2 million in funding from suitable authorities--more likely from project financiers--before it can proceed any further with the first phase of the project's construction. It has taken more than a decade for Oceanlinx to get the planning approvals to introduce the Commercial Wave Energy Demonstrator to the world. According to sources, Oceanlinx has spent more than $100 million in the past 15 years, of which about 80% had come from foreign investments. Prior to the Port MacDonnell project, Oceanlinx demonstrated a 450-kilovolt (kV) prototype for Oscillating Water Column (OWC) Technology by launching the first grid at Port Kembla in early 2010, which proved to be a failure.

The Port MacDonnell project is located 395 kilometers southeast of Adelaide, South Australia. The first phase of the project will involve demonstration of a 2,000-tonne OWC unit in a parabolic wall chamber on the ocean bed, at a depth of 10 metres. This unit is connected to a single Oceanlinx Hydraulic Turbine that rotates the generator attached with a control system to create electricity and transmit it to the grid. greenWAVE technology has a more sophisticated design and greater advantages over the company's blueWAVE and airwave technologies. blueWAVE is built with a deep cluster of six OWC units; greenWAVE is built with a single OWC unit in much shallower water and is less harmful to the environment.

Early in 2010, Oceanlinx launched its proposal for the greenWAVE project and arrived at a full-scale development of the design by end of December 2010. Oceanlinx conducted extensive research and development, as well as technology testings, during the first quarter of 2011. The company completed successful testing in July 2011, proving that greenWAVE is more cost-effective technology when compared with onshore wind and other forms of renewable energy that are at more advanced levels. This greenWAVE concept won acclaim from several authorities, such as the Academy of Science and the United Nations, for its diversified and improvised technology. Later in 2011, Oceanlinx submitted its proposal to the Victorian government for grants, which is recently received.v Oceanlinx is now seeking funds from the beneficiaries; once it secures complete funding, it hopes to release bids and expressions of interest for EPC contracting firms for construction. Oceanlinx expects to begin construction on this pilot project in November of this year. The first phase of the project will take 12 to 18 months for completion, with power delivery into the grid by end of 2013. The prototype unit will generate 1 megawatt (MW) of electricity, with the possibility to expand into an array of units that are expected to have a generating capacity of between 30 and 100 MW.

According to Baghaei, "The successful operation of the first phase would likely motivate the expansion of the project into the second phase, which would form an array of units likely to have a generating capacity of between 30 and 100 megawatts."

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