Guest essay by Eric Worrall
ABC reporter Rebecca Turner claims Carnegie have not published the results of their wave energy experiment.
Carnegie Clean Energy undertakes capital raising in a last-ditch bid to avoid liquidation
By Rebecca Turner
Updated Thu at 3:42pmAs it makes what could be a final roll of the dice for its survival, collapsed wave energy hopeful Carnegie Clean Energy is still not disclosing the performance of its most valuable asset — its CETO wave technology.
Key points:
- Carnegie is facing liquidation unless it raises $5.5 million in capital by next week
- The firm’s CEO cannot say how much energy its CETO 5 technology produces
- One analyst says investors “would have to be a bit of a masochist” to reinvest
Carnegie is in the process of trying to raise up to $11.5 million in capital to pay creditors, including board member and former AFL commissioner Mike Fitzpatrick.
If it does not raise the minimum amount of $5.5 million by next Wednesday, the former renewable energy darling is facing the likely outcome of liquidation.
Its thousands of shareholders, predominantly small investors, are being encouraged to invest in the capital raising, which offers them four shares at a price of $0.001 for each share they hold.
Carnegie has been developing its prized CETO wave energy technology for more than 15 years and has attracted tens of millions of taxpayer dollars from both federal and state governments to commercialise the technology.
…
Cynics amongst you might be tempted to believe the reason the Carnegie CEO was so sketchy about the results of their CETO wave energy trial is because their technology doesn’t work.
But this surely cannot be the case; After all, Carnegie received millions of dollars of government funding, and we all know how rigorous public sector oversight of taxpayer’s money is, especially when it comes to funding renewable energy projects.
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Tens of millions of dollars? Where did the money go? And why isn’t the company showing its results, even after all the federal and private money they have got… Its incredible to think that this world runs on two things, oil and electricity, it seems that if you take both away humans will crumble away…
“it seems that if you take both away humans will crumble away…”
It seems that is the goal.
oil and coal, electricity is not a source of energy, it is means of transporting it.
I was like oopmh on ‘attracted’. I didn’t know Carnegie has attracted taxpayer money. I think the government doing a bad investment should be described by a totally different subject / verb / object. Like the government has sinked tens of millions of taxpayer money to Carnegie.
It ‘attracts’ money by putting on performances. It is theatre, much like snake oil sales. I mean there is indeed a placebo effect where many people actually BELIEVE that the march forward is on and therefore are willing to send more money.
Actually the Western Australian state government withdrew their support some time ago when Carnegie failed to achieve their targets. And the Southern Ocean off Western Australia is not a place you would want to be in a storm, so the chances of any plant surviving there would be minimal.
the last one that I think? came from WA to Sth Aus went tits up offshore of a south aussie beach
there are louder and growing calls to blow it up as its a rusting hulk and an eyesore according to locals.
reckon this mobs going to turn turtle too pretty soon
oh
greenpeas could run a fundraiser for em as could avaaz and getup
not sure if theres enough mugs even via those clusterf..ks to dob in for it though
I thought that the world runs on greed and fear.
yes but it has to be sustainable, renewable FEAR.
AKA FUD
Exactly. Grind the straw dogs underfoot, because as Orwell pointed out, they only know we’re obeying when they’re making us suffer.
The 1960s began the push to establish rule by zealots with tiny brains. Time for counterrevolution.
It’s a lifestyle company. Its primary objective is to provide a superior lifestyle for its directors.
Carnegie doesn’t owe taxpayers any explanation; the government that provided the grant does.
According to the Australian Securities Exchange, trading in Carnegie Clean Energy is “Suspended”:
https://www.asx.com.au/asx/share-price-research/company/CCE
No surprise, as their shares are $0.003 (Australian) and they don’t seem to have any working products. But the 2018 Annual Report to Shareholders is 104 pages long, so I guess they do have plenty of words to go around. 😉
An acquaintance tried to get them to provide a quote for servicing remote submarine fiber relays, could not get a response. He would have tried it if it could have passed a reliability assessment by real engineers.
Someone is raising a hand. What’s that I see? Goodbye.
OK, are they washed up or did they just wipe out?
The late, great Dick Dale. The king of surf music! Now *that* guy knew how to harness wave energy!
“Will You Help Save Renewable Startup Carnegie Energy?”
No effing way I will invest wave technology.
What is the long term environmental impact? Would this not industrialize the oceans and shorelines more than they already are? What the unintended consequences be; more death of unsuspecting wildlife getting trapped in machinery? You would remove natural habitat from the natural world. There is no such thing as free or renewable energy.
As a Brit I believe energy from the sea is the most suitable renewable as nowhere here is more than 70 miles from the sea.
However waves are nothing more than liquid wind and the energy derived from it is as unpredictable as wind.
The other problem is that waves come in all shapes sizes and amplitudes and it is very difficult to design a structure that can cope.
Better to go for tidal energy which is highly predictable in its output and is long lasting, as with two tides a day each of which races around our island, the amount of energy could be consistently forecast if the tidal stations were spread round the coast.
Unfortunately all eyes have been on the hopeless solar and wind and there is very little appetite for tidal projects, not the least because they are large scale expensive projects
Tonyb
“However waves are nothing more than liquid wind”
That is the daft idea that has wrecked every wave energy project.
I had a case of liquid wind once. I wont bother explaining the mess it made of the bed sheets.
TonyB,
tidal energy is not as good as you think, it is just the same as other renewable sources. It is expensive, intermittent and I would say very maintenance intensive. The Swansea Bay project was scrapped for that very reason, lots of subsidies for little power from a physically large system.
Iain, I agree, the Swansea (where I live) Tidal Lagoon was a massive, expensive structure that would produce very little & very expensive energy twice a day.
It would suffer with major silting problem as well.
And probably the bestest place on earth to harvest “tidal energy” is in the Bay of Fundy.
Been tired already, , in fact like wind its old technology not new , and guess why they stopped using it ?
Currents, which are the result of wind energy exchange food and nutrients with less endowed ocean areas.
Currents, especially those driven by wind energy or tidal influences are key factors in fish, crustacea, mollusca, plants, etc. lifecycles.
Drain the currents of energy will traumatize all life forms dependent upon that water movement.
Carnegie energie : nonsense in, nonsense out.
nonsense in, nothing out
None-cents out?
What did their prospectus say? Are the directors actionable? Caveat emptor, fellers .
Tidal energy is far more reliable and can be planned for, unlike wind and waves. The moon always pulls. A little more, a little less, no one would notice.
Waves are a great idea for the future that never comes. Tides contain masses of energy that can be channeled through a narrow space (concentration point) while wave energy, like the wind, has to be extracted at the density it occurs naturally. So fundamentally from an efficiency of materials point of view, tides are a wiser approach.
There is a wave-based generation system on an island off the W coast of the UK, which uses air as a working fluid. It has been running for ages. It works but any patent would have expired by now. So no big licencing deals.
If people were satisfied with simple and reliable technologies we might get something. These three-part floating platforms made for a particular characteristic wavelength with hydraulic pumps and generators are way too complex to ever repay their cost of production. If all “costs” are really energy in the final analysis, it means the thumbsuck analysis is they won’t produce enough energy to build another one, unless it is built in China. That means it is a coal-powered wave generator.
Been tired already, , in fact like wind its old technology not new , and guess why they stopped using it ?
Why don’t they move the company to Cayman Islands?
I have worked on financing of large capital projects for 20 years and have never known any investor that would want all their investment used to pay off back debt and line the pockets of the current management. In fact, most investors would, in this situation, mandate that funds not be used for that purpose. That the is both debt and obligations to or expected of management makes this essentially a worthless investment. And without tangible performance data, how can one begin to judge the value of the technology.
Reminds me of the quote from Bones: He’s Dead” But the best one is, “He’s worse than dead, Jim. His mind is gone!”
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=Star+Trek+Quote+from+Bones++Jim%2c+It%27s+Dead&view=detail&mid=39D7F8839EFA2680B3BC39D7F8839EFA2680B3BC&FORM=VIRE
Might I presume, Eric, that you are nominating yourself as a cynic? Maybe there’s a club, or secret handshake, or something for us? Wait a minute, millions in tax dollars?
The government should never spend money on anything that private industry will finance.
The government might have a role promoting stuff that might be worthwhile. Who else is going to finance the curiosity based research we need to produce scientific breakthroughs?
commieBob
The government should never spend money on anything that private industry ‘won’t’ finance.
“Who else is going to finance the curiosity based research we need to produce scientific breakthroughs?”
Were Newton, Einstein and the Wright brothers funded by the state?
In part. Newton
The Wright brothers did not produce any scientific breakthroughs. We already had heavier than air flight of gliders. The gasoline engine was becoming practical. They combined the two. This isn’t to deny the importance of what they did but their achievements were incremental in nature rather than being breakthroughs. The difference matters a lot. Incremental improvements are amenable to encouragement and management.
A more interesting example is Edison. He came up with a lot of stuff and he managed to monetize it. He basically created an invention factory. Even then, did he come up with any breakthroughs? Yes, at least one, the Edison Effect which is the basis of vacuum tubes.
Einstein made a living as a patent clerk and a professor, both arguably state sponsored.
To make scientific breakthroughs, you have to have enough time when you aren’t worrying about putting food on the table. If you aren’t rich, the money has to come from somewhere. Once you achieve the breakthrough, it may not be monetized within your lifetime. An example of that would be Hedy Lamarr, who invented spread spectrum.
Breakthroughs are necessary to keep ahead of resource depletion. Without them, Malthus’ predictions will come true.
re: “The Wright brothers did not produce any scientific breakthroughs. ”
They came up with new tables of airfoil ‘data’ and performance using home-built (the first used to test air foils it seems) wind tunnel.
The data they obtained was used to optimize both wing shape AND propeller shape.
Previous designers had used a ‘whirling arm’ (subject to interfering with its own wake) to test airfoils.
http://archive.rubicon-foundation.org/xmlui/handle/123456789/3585
re: “An example of that would be Hedy Lamarr, who invented spread spectrum.”
Waaaaaay overblown; did you see the Bell Labs contraption (named SIGSALY ) that was ACTUALLY used for comms?
I am convinced that the “Hedy Lamarr” thing was a ruse, to let the Germans ‘think’ that was all the more sophisticated we were at the time …
We’ve gone through this before ON THIS VERY WEBSITE – See these links and the mentions of “SIGSALY “:
https://yorkporc.wordpress.com/2011/05/18/sigsaly-from-nsa-historians-perspective/
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/04/19/why-it-seems-that-severe-weather-is-getting-worse-when-the-data-shows-otherwise-a-historical-perspective/#comment-577830
Her invention was a frequency hopping scheme and was quite plausible given the technology available at the time. It could be implemented by attaching a motor to something like a TV tuner. They already had the necessary synchronization technology.
We should also note that her previous husband was involved in arms manufacturing for the Germans. She may have got the original idea from him.
Nikola Tesla is a far more likely idea origination source as his ideas and presentations were responsible for many of the early wavelength devices, including Marconi’s.
re: “Nikola Tesla is a far more likely idea origination source as his ideas and presentations were responsible for many of the early wavelength devices, including Marconi’s.”
I’m thinking “no”.
Not on this subject, not on this technology.
Cite some work or writing of his on different modulations, specifically, spectral spreading codes and such, intended for various purposes, such as multiplexing, or obscuration.
Tesla (b. 1856) was past his prime when vacuum tubes and the modern concepts of radio were coming about. There were many who were far ahead of Tesla at this point. like Armstrong (b. 1890), the eventual father of FM, which might also be considered a form of ‘spread spectrum’.
re: “Were Newton, Einstein and the Wright brothers funded by the state?”
Or, Dr. Randell L. Mills for that matter?
RE: “Will You Help Save Renewable Startup Carnegie Energy?”
No.
One day,I was walking in Manhattan in NYC and someone came up to me for directions and asked,”How do I get to Carnegie Hall?”
I replied,”practice,practice,practice”.
Leonardo and ALGORE can easily pony up 5 million between them this should be a piece of cake.
+42 🙂
And I’m sure Bill Nye could come up with a few thousand as well. And just think if all the Hollywood hypocrites each contributed. But don’t hold your breath waiting for that to happen.
Tens of million of $$$? Those are rookie numbers, you gotta pump those numbers up. If you’re 10 million in debt, that’s your problem, if you’re 10 billion in debt, that’s a big problem to a lot of people.
…and who didn’t see this coming?
In more than 15 years they had to invent nothing new…just put the pieces together
In the wind industry, the critical step to success involved a technique which became known as “throwing metal at it”. The other thing worth knowing, is that the success of renewable energy was inversely proportional to the number of academics.
For wave energy, the problems are far far worse, so I’d say wave was impossible if any academic is involved.
So even if it’s peer reviewed you can’t trust academe meme schemes.
No!
The energy is right there! If only it wasn’t so hard to collect. Hey, I know – how about lightning energy! Ben Franklin did it. Kites. Lots and lots of kites.
“A fool and his money are soon parted.” — Thomas Tusser
Or a”a fool and his money are soon partied”.
Anyone who has owned or worked on a boat kept on salt water would immediately recognize the multitude of problems any infrastructure project like this would face. Water, wind, salt, electricity, and constant motion all conspire with each other to constantly destroy whatever man tries to build in this environment.
Thanks John E.,
I was going to write something like you have, but decided to read all the comments first.
Should have included relentless UV and sea life to the list of enemies.
No. And whats more I’d like to see the entire Board of Directors and the Auditors of Carnegie investigated and where appropriate, tried for criminal activity and/or fraud.
If you can’t scam the government you ain’t even trying.
Until recently, there was a device sitting on the sea floor some ten miles to the NW of the little town of St Ives, in West Cornwall, UK. It was installed in 2010, and was intended to provide a test-bed for up to four wave energy devices at any one time. In winter storms the waves there can be mountainous. The Wave Hub was connected to the shore by a cable capable of handling 20MW. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave_Hub .
As far as I am aware, only three companies expressed a serious interest in using the Wave Hub: Seatricity, whose device wasn’t actually designed to produce electricity offshore, but to pump water under pressure to a land-based turbine. http://seatricity.com/
The second company was GWave, a US company, apparently without a web site . The announcement that they were going to make use of the Wave Hub is here
http://tinyurl.com/y9poc4ar
The third company was Carnegie http://tinyurl.com/y6lhnbtq
Only Seatricity put a device on site at the Wave Hub. It broke its tether after only one month, in comparatively mild summertime sea conditions. Seatricity now appears to be on the verge of collapse http://tinyurl.com/y5vpn4ve
Since then, both GWave and Carnegie have cancelled their options to use the Wave Hub.
In view of the lack of commercial support for the Wave Hub, it has been decommissioned in the last few months .
Wave energy is dead. There are cheaper if equally unreliable ways of making renewable electricity.
All of these alternatives energy schemes are subsidy scams to fleece the taxpayer.