The Western Cape is making an effort to find out the viability of constructing a R15-billion, 770-MW ocean wave energy project being developed by Darling-based project developer Wave Energy Generation.
Wave Energy Generation CEO Hermann Oelsner told Engineering News that South Africa’s south-western coast is a good location for a wave energy project based on its eastward-moving, low-pressure systems created in the south Indian and south Atlantic oceans.
South Africa has an abundant wave energy resource available for wave energy conversion with a mean annual average deep-sea wave power of about 42 kW/m, dropping to 39 kW/m near the shore. Oelsner elaborates that the project under investigation is based on wave energy converter technology that was originally designed by Stellenbosch University.
The Stellenbosch Wave Energy Converter (SWEC) was developed by the privately funded Ocean Energy Research Group, which was established at Stellenbosch University in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
The development of SWEC was essentially a response to the oil crisis in the late 1970s, which forced governments of the world to look to alternative sources of energy.
Oelsner said that the project has an ambitious target of 770 MW of generation capability saying, “This will be achieved by building a number of submerged V-shaped collector arms along 40 km of the Western Cape coast.”
He stated that the design has been completed and the company is currently engaged in the process of attracting investors and securing funding for the first 5-MW demonstration phase.