Wave Power Along Australia’s Southern Coast  Could Generate 50% of the Nation's Current Requirements. (August 18, 2010)

Published online a fortnight ago in the Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy, one of the American Institute of Physics stable, M. A. Hemer and D. A. Griffin from the Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research based in Hobart* detail their study of "The wave energy resource along Australia’s Southern margin".

The authors estimate that if 10% of the incident near-shore energy in this region, which is an ambitious target when conversion efficiency is considered, were converted to electricity, approximately 130 TW h/yr (one-half of Australia’s total present-day electricity consumption) would be produced.

In their overall conclusion they note: "The Australian Government seeks to produce 45 000 GW h/yr of additional renewable energy before 2020," and go on to state, "The Southern margin of the Australian continent provides an abundant resource of wave energy, which can contribute to this target. Typical annual mean wave energy fluxes along the Southern margin are approximately 50 kW/m (432 GW h/yr/km) . The total required renewable energy quota could be achieved if 10% of the available wave energy resource over a 1000 km section of the Southern Australian margin were converted to electricity."

The authors are by no means advocating immediate funding for undertaking the construction of industrial wave-power generation, but claim the data they have obtained  provide a "suitable data set for informing policy with details of the available wave energy in Australia’s priority near-shore regions for harnessing wave energy," and they go on to say, "The data will also further refine the most suitable locations for commercialization of wave energy converters, of interest to the wave energy industry."

However, the authors caution that a period of 10 years or more, should be regarded as the next step to adequately define the wave climate for wave energy resource assessments for a complete assessment of the suitability of the wave energy resource at specific locations. Those data are essential to allow "the required model [to] be applied with a single domain, so that modelling artefacts observed in the present study are removed".

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*The Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research is: A Partnership between CSIRO and the Bureau of Meterolology and the CSIRO Wealth for Oceans National Research Flagship, Hobart, Tasmania 7001, Australia