ACHIEVE program’s team prepares for wave energy prototype deployment in Spain

The ACHIEVE program’s team is progressing with preparations for the deployment of the CETO wave energy prototype in Spain at the Biscay Marine Energy Platform (BiMEP), securing drivetrain components and moving forward with fabrication.

According to EuropeWave, key milestones include the procurement of generators, and gearboxes, and the ongoing fabrication of critical parts such as the tensioner and tensioner limiter/clutch. Local manufacturers are engaged in producing the buoyant actuator (BA), the CETO system’s prime mover.

Testing is set to ramp up in the coming months. Electrical bring-up testing in Bilbao will confirm system functionality, followed by back-to-back testing in Germany to evaluate sustained power generation and efficiency, EuropeWave noted. These trials aim to validate system performance and mitigate deployment risks.

Operational readiness remains a focus, with a review of operation and maintenance (O&M) strategies underway. Meanwhile, the team said that is engaging stakeholders, hosting student visits, and participating in industry events. 

“The ACHIEVE Programme team remains committed to stakeholder engagement and knowledge dissemination. Having recently settling into a new office space in Bilbao, the team has hosted student visitors at its office,” said EuropeWave. 

The ACHIEVE Program is led by Carnegie’s subsidiaries, CETO Wave Energy Ireland and Carnegie Technologies Spain, under contracts from the EuropeWave Buyers Group and supported by Spanish and Basque government funding. Carnegie said that it would deploy and operate a CETO prototype at the BiMEP, starting in 2025. The unit will operate for two years, gathering data to validate CETO technology and advance commercialization.

In September 2023, EuropeWave selected three finalists to fabricate, deploy, and demonstrate prototype designs in the third and final phase of the wave energy project. 

CETO is a fully submerged, point absorber type wave energy technology device. A submerged buoy sits a few meters below the surface and moves with the ocean’s waves. This orbital motion drives a power take-off (PTO) system that converts this motion into electricity.

Carnegie’s wholly-owned subsidiary, Carnegie Technologies Spain, secured a €2.1 million grant in March from the Basque Energy Agency to support deploying the CETO wave energy device at BiMEP.

In August 2024, Carnegie Clean Energy, through its wholly owned subsidiary CETO Wave Energy Ireland (CWEI), received a progress payment of €251,100 under the EuropeWave Phase 3 contract. 

Later, in December 2024, Carnegie Clean Energy secured a bond facility agreement with Export Finance Australia (EFA) to support the ACHIEVE Program’s CETO wave energy technology deployment at the BiMEP in Spain. 

Just recently,  Carnegie Clean Energy received a €317,945 “milestone payment” from the Basque Energy Agency (Ente Vasco de la Energía – EVE) for its ACHIEVE+ wave energy project