Australian Wave Energy Atlas - Garden Island Case Study Field Program

CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere conducted an intensive field program between Dec 2014 and Feb 2016 to assess the physical wave-current-morphodynamic response of wave energy extraction at Carnegie Clean Energy's Perth Wave Energy Project, located near Garden Island near Perth. The aim of the field program was to provide in-situ measurements of changes in incident wave spectrum and associated hydrodynamics adjacent to one or more wave energy converter devices to provide a necessary data stream for wave model verification.
Five deployments were undertaken; First, instruments were deployed on a 34-m diameter ring around unit 1. This pre-deployment was aimed at investigating the non-linear interactions between the wave field and the WEC. The following four deployments were aimed at measuring the changes in the wave energy-frequency spectrum downstream of the WEC array. For the second and third deployments, all instruments were positioned in a triangular array downstream of the WEC array in the direction of the propagation of the known swell climate.
The last AWAC deployment (deployment 5) occurred following the recovery of all WEC units. The AWACs were deployed in the same configuration as the previous deployment and this deployment acts as a control experiment to determine the natural variability of the wave field across the site.
This work was funded by the Australian Renewable Energy Agency and CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere, and Carnegie Clean Energy provided access to site.