UWA’s moored multi-modal multibody lifted out of water following six months of wave energy data collection

A six-month data collection trial of Australia’s only current wave energy project ended on Thursday when the 30-tonne device was lifted out of the water at Albany Waterfront Marina by a crane. The moored multi-modal multibody, or M4, device was launched on November 8 after 6½ years of planning and work to get the project into the water. The aim of the project — currently the only one of its kind in the southern hemisphere — is to measure the capacity of the device for energy production before creating a larger-scale version. Albany project lead and the University of WA’s Marine Energy Research Australia initiative manager Dr Wiebke Ebeling said the project was “proof of concept in the first instance” and that it had been a “massive success beyond expectations”. “We knew from smaller tests like tank testing and basin testing, so smaller bodies of water — not open ocean — that the technology as such works in the open ocean trial,” she said. The 30-tonne device was lifted out of the water by Capel Crane Hire, with a 350-tonne crane transported from Bunbury. “The device itself was about 30 tonnes out at at sea, and was ballasted in with sand in those floats just to make it snug and not flop around in the water — it can’t be too rigid,” Dr Ebeling said. Dr Ebeling said King George Sound was used as a nursery site for the project but would probably not be considered as a production site for a large-scale or permanent device. “The gold standard to power it would be out at Sandpatch . . . if you had a full-sized device out at Sandpatch, that would be on par with the wind farm because it’s powered 24/7 — it’s got the most consistent, most powerful waves on the planet,” she said. The full data from the device will be analysed throughout the year, with some of the data to be presented and discussed at the Australian Marine Sciences Association conference in Melbourne in July.