We all know how strong tidal energy is, right? What if we can extract this force from the sea water and used it for the production of clean energy. This is the idea behind the Carnegie Wave Energy. The Perth Wave Energy Project was materialized at Garden Island, Australia. This is the same location where an Australian naval base is located. This initiative makes use of the ocean waves to create electricity and for also the production of potable water.
CETO 6 is a commercial scale unit of this system that has been created using 20 buoys that are 20 meters in diameter and have been attached to the seabed. These buoys respond to ocean currents and pump water at high pressure into the ground unit. This powers the turbines and generators, thus producing energy. The water pressure is also employed in powering up the units responsible for desalination making sea water potable.
As of now, all the energy that is being produced by this project is being utilized by the Australian naval base. The company, however, does have plans for creating a bigger system in 2016 that will most probably crank out energy to the residents in the area. This won’t be the first project that will generate energy from sea waves, however, this is the first one doing so from submerged buoys. Using this approach keeps the landscape intact and also protects buoys from potential damage that is caused by storms and bad weather.
Such systems can provide cleaner energy in future and theoretically speaking can also provide with an unlimited supply of potable water.