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.
I worked on a hydraulic hybrid UPS truck for the EPA starting 15 years ago, same thing, tens of millions spent for ZERO return – the product “worked” but was of ZERO commercial value.
Autocar manufactured a refuse truck that used a hybrid-hydraulic power train that stored energy from braking to supplement the power of the diesel engine which they said provided dramatic fuel savings. Miami-Dade County in south Florida placed an order for 29 of the trucks in 2012 but I haven’t heard if that worked out for them. A big refuse truck seems like a viable use for that technology.
Problem with Diesel -Hydraulics is maintenance. diesel electric is much more viable. in big
applications.
Seals,actuators etc. are the problem .UP and SP tested Krupp Diesel Hydraulics back in the 70’s I believe the problem is the Krupps were built for a German-sized country. San Francisco to Chicago without shutting down, however…
Around 2003 I wrote a report explaining why wave energy would never work.
(The development methodology always failed to focus on the necessary elements for success)
No one listened and a lot of people have wasted a lot of money since then.
Wave energy to academics and the gullible investor is a bit like what those carnivorous plants are to flies … it looks like a good thing, until you’re stuck in it and then it devours your money.
But, but…. this from the CSIRO – another Government money sink (my correction of the number of devices given Carnegie’s position).
https://www.csiro.au/en/Research/OandA/Areas/Marine-technologies/Ocean-energy/Wave-energy
and
The Wave Atlas can be found at https://nationalmap.gov.au/renewables/#share=s-gGd5ztFcxe2ysy9f.
I especially like their ‘close enough for government work’ disclaimer:
When I was part of the financial sector, I surveyed the “clean tech” industry and concluded that three technologies were economically viable if subsidized to some degree: geothermal (ground source) heat [pumps]
jumps, wind turbines, and solar panels. I concluded that wave generation would never yield more energy than it consumed by making and installing the equipment.When I built a new house in 2017 out in the countryside, I considered all of them.
Ground-source heat pumps were the first to be eliminated. The capital cost is at least double; the equipment is finicky and hard to maintain, and it turns out that the ground freezes around the buried pipes in a typical winter. (Same for summer in reverse in really hot places.) Not only that, but air-source heat pumps have made big improvements — which happened BEFORE I did the analysis. Learned from that one!
A home-scale windmill was next to go. They are expensive, have short warranties, and the required maintenance is tricky and expensive.
Solar panels were the last to be rejected. That was a closer call, depending heavily on electric rates and the “net metering” subsidy granted to grid-tied arrays. When the local utility ended net metering, that sealed the deal. But it was probably a financial no-go even with net metering. By the way, grid-tie and net metering is an integral part of home-scale windmills too.
You can theoretically do an end-around grid tie with storage batteries. I looked into that and found that the requjred battery array would cost more than the house we built. Conclusion: The only way any solar or wind can pay off is at utility scale, as a supplement, and with significant subsidies.
No falling water on the property.
Correct. We once stayed at a place that had its own miniature hydro plant because they had falling water, but that’s not us. We also don’t have a creek, which theoretically would have solved the ground-freezing issue with geothermal. But even if we did have a creek like our neighbors do, it’d be a big “if” on getting permission to use it that way. Same goes for a small-scale hydro plant, if it had been possible.
Suggest a re-calculating of the financials is in order for today’s economics (e.g. cheap solar panels) and figuring with these givens:
a) solar panels with grid-tie,
b) NO batteries
c) choose an electric provider like “Griddy” where you pay close to the wholesale electric rate.
Here in Texas, wholesale rate (before transmission charges) about 2 cents per kWh.
BEAR in mind the wholesale rate can “shoot up” for a few hours in the afternoon on hot days where demand in the state is high, so maybe a standby genset (not a bad idea in any case) can be spec’d in too.
We only have one provider: the local public utility district. I am curious about the Texas case; after that 2 cents, what’s your total per-kWh charge, with ALL other charges included? I’ve had reason to study electric bills around the country, and they are usually complicated.
The bill where we live is as simple as any I’ve seen. No time-of-day differential, no consumption tier pricing, no fuel cost adjustments, yadda yadda yadda. Just the residential rate (x) usage + a $20.32 monthly “customer charge” = your monthly bill.
If you look at the the typical electric utility’s total rate after all the add-ons, 50-60% of it reflects the cost of transmission, distribution, and administration. We live in a far-flung county with roughly 10 people per sq mi, so those costs are 60% here. The utility buys almost all of its electricity at a wholesale rate of about 3.75 cents/kWh, and charges a retail rate of about 9.6 cents.
When I looked into solar panels a couple years ago, the first challenge was getting accurate numbers. Panel users are like electric car owners (I own an EV): Most of them are evangelists (I’m an exception) and overstate performance and understate costs. So you have to take any claims with a grain of salt. After searching, I found a reliable., highly factual site. With the “net metering” subsidy that would have paid me the retail rate for excess generation in summer, it initially looked like a wash on the costs with an expected 25-year panel life and appropriate degradation included.
Then I realized that I had overlooked the monthly customer charge, which added another $6,100 to the panel cost side, or about 20%. And that was without factoring in the inevitable inflation of that charge. Thus, a reasonable back-of-the-envelope calculation disfavored panels. When the utility ended “net metering” for new customers, I looked at batteries and laughed. I could’ve still installed panels, but I was determined that they cost out rather than be a vanity purchase.
A “standby genset?” We have one for power outages, something that’s common enough in the countryside. It cost about $10,000 for a unit that will only partially replace what we get from the utility. Good enough for emergencies but not for regular service. It runs on propane; makes enough noise that you wouldn’t want it on all the time; the fuel cost is 45 cents/kWh; a unit that would truly run the whole house would have been about $25,000.
Bottom line: To be as polite as possible here, I did my homework. I’m not sure that your “2 cents/kWh” number in Texas even comes close to reflecting the entire cost of juice even from the bargain provider. And you haven’t mentioned feed-in tariffs for panel users there. So if you could do more homework and provide a non-evangelistic analysis, well, I’m one of the original pencil-necked numbers geeks, and would be interested.
One South African house was built to be “off the grid” with wind turbines, solar panels, and a borehole well with a wind-pump. One room of the house is full of truck batteries. Cost? About double what a normal house of the same size would have cost. Worth it? Dunno.
I did a rough calculation of how much it would cost to go off-grid. We wouldn’t have been required to simply shift from daytime surpluses to nighttime absence, but from summer to winter, because winter daytimes aren’t adequate for winter nights — in fact, not even for winter daytimes. The cost of batteries alone would’ve been well over $1 million for the life of the panels.
Fact is that in non-equitorial regions, solar is a supplement to grid power, and does not cost out unless significantly subsidized.
I believe pig sh1t can produce more energy than ‘renewables’.
And it’s more predictable.
(Doesn’t go down too well in the Islamic countries though. Maybe that’s why they’re locked into oil)
Who would be so stupid as to bail out their creditors for absolutely nothing in return? Oh, brainwashed green activists I suppose.
I would bet a lot of those monies they raise would probably be going to pay the management and directors bonuses and roll over the debt from old investors. In other words a Ponzi Scheme! These small start-ups on the stock market are usually like a speculative mine exploration company where all the proceeds of the stock sale go into really expensive expense budgets for the few in management and directors. I have seen a few of these shiesters at work close-up with many different ‘vaporware’ products, like all the new and better battery companies or the hydrogen economy 15-20 years ago. I have learned my lesson now on the stock market with these, especially the mining exploration stuff but also many renewables. The old adage about a fool and their money, well that couldn’t be more true than to these stock market schemes. I am surprised that a lot of it isn’t investigated as criminal in nature. Because that is what it actually is.
And Wave Energy? Just forget it. Another low density real expensive boondoggle that produces no useful energy for the investment required. That would be all the planet would need is a million of these monstrosities clogging up our shore lines and water ways. Let it go bankrupt and fail, with prejudice.
Like all renewable energy schemes, they exit *NOT* to harvest natural flows of energy for human use as electricity.
They exist to harvest OPM in the form of tax credits and subsidies.
Take away or reduce their subsidies, and they financially collapse. Every. Single. One.
If the technology is any good, it will be sold to someone during the liquidation.
If the company is renewable, won’t it come back on it’s own?
Thanks MarkW, I finally understand.
I thought “renewable” energy companies referred to the way they generated electricity.
I think your definition is far more accurate – the companies themselves are the “renewable” product, because there is an endless stream of government largesse!
Phoenix rising from the ashes
I seem to remember that wave energy was debunked decades ago. Oh, wait, so were windmills. Impressive as waves are, wind energy is also lost to currents. Maybe they could put turbines in rip currents, their structures could be justified as places to save swimmers. Might learn something about rip currents. As long as you’re dreaming why not go to where the easier to justify adequate amounts of energy are — hurricanes.
And what ever happened to thermohaline sources of energy, something about depth got in the way? Or did it have to do with carbon dioxide?
According to their income statement in 2018 they show only $79,000 as R&D. Have they just given up?
They listed a one time unusual expense at $47 million but I could not find the note to explain that.
2018 had a net operating income of -$71 million.
Why would anyone want to spend another penny on this company?
I followed the link to abc to see if there was any mention of publication of company accounts . I know the usual formalities are waived for anything “green”,” renewable” or “sustainable” because these are holy projects but I thought that a journalist perusing accounts, if available, would find out where all those millons ended up.
No, but I noticed reference to some other articles on abc. One on the 3billion yr old stromatolites of Pilbara , fascinating, and a very interesting item on the recent slowdown in the Australian economy .
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-09-01/gdp-to-take-another-step-down-but-how-low-will-it-go/11462508
Apparently (displaying my ignorance here) there is something called the Misery Index: a sum of unemployment and inflation rates. For the G10 countries as a whole it was a maximum in 2008/9 but declined to nearly zero in 2018. It seems that it is far worse in Aus and Canada than elsewhere and amazingly, Canada under the adorable Trudeau , darling of the BBC and other media, has a Misery Index nearly 4 times that of USA under the deplorable Trump. How strange- or perhaps not.
Apparently invented by Jimmy Carter:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcXODiINQoE
“Rigorous public sector oversight of taxpayer’s money” is where the government looks right over the top of the problem and does not observe that billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money are being wasted on outrageous boondoggles that are in total accord with Climate Alarmist theory.
My parents built a house of about 1600 sq. ft. with a geothermal heat pump, the water supply being an open system where the water is pumped from a well and flowed to a leach field. The heat exchanger lasted for over 25 years before it failed, at which time they used the backup electrical heat strips for winter heat for several years. Their electric bills about doubled so I think it was worth the original cost. They could not find anyone to replace the heat exchanger. Eventually they replaced the entire heat pump with a newer model which is still an open system and seems to be working well. I was surprised by the low level of rust in the exchanger when it failed after all those years but the water there is relatively soft.
Both systems use a separate water coil for cooling, the heat pump was just for heating. After the first systems heat side failed, the cooling still worked after I capped off the hot side. Simple and effective method of cooling where the water is dumped into the sand which then returns to the aquifer eventually, and uses the household water pump to supply the cooling and heat pump. After over 30 years the well pump has never been replaced and there have been no signs of well water issues but the location is essentially rural.
The house was reasonably well built with well insulated 2×6 walls and triple glazed Anderson windows and sliding glass doors. It was configured for passive solar heating (south facing sliders with insulated concrete floors in the walk out basement) although that function was rarely used it could really warm the house on clear days. It is in Massachusetts on the coast so it does not get extremely hot or cold, but the cooling takes the moisture out of the air, very important for comfort in the summer.
The electric bills are not too high considering the electrical water heater and clothes dryer although they have been going UP due to being in Mass. and them shutting down the Nuke plant there. When the heat pump went out I mentioned oil heat but there was no easy place to put the tank and there was no chase to the roof for the vent.
When we built a house a couple years ago, I looked into a geothermal heat pump. Ground-based systems (trenching) are much more problematic than I had thought, and running a pipe down the well was a non-starter for reasons I don’t remember. We wound up with an air-source heat pump and a backup propane furnace.
Wave renewables? Who needs that when we can have these giant flying mofos instead? Obviously nothing could possibly go wrong.
Politely, No.
I want to develop a new technology to harness the enormous power of tropical cyclones – we will sell shares in HurricaneCo in areas bordering the Atlantic Ocean and TyphoonCo is areas bordering the Pacific. Our sturdy ships will sail into the paths of these cyclones and tap their enormous energy, which is then stored in thousands of tonnes of AAA ballast-batteries, located deep within the hull of the ship to prevent capsizing. When a ship’s batteries are full, it will sail to the nearest port, connect to the grid and discharge its precious electrical cargo according to local demand.
[I suppose I must say “sarc/off” for the radical greens, who will believe anything.]
I recall about 1938 reading about a experiment in France, where they had
a pipe go down some considerable distance into the sea. This water was then
pumped up. Being a lot colder than the sea at the top, they extracted energ
from the difference between the two.
I also recall that Denmark had a wave energy system working. Anyone
know if it actually worked.
But why if so many people think that CO2 in the atmosphere is a problem
don’t we use Nuclear. . The bomb needs 99 % purity, a Nuclear power
station only needs about 11 %.. , hence no danger. Bad engineering
was the problem in the old USSR.
Of course if the object of the exercise is to close down the Western world
then any way is used.
MJE VK5ELL
Buried in the original article are these gems:
“Carnegie has previously raised more than $200 million in equity, debt and government grants, although last year it posted a $63 million loss and wrote down the value of its CETO technology from $83 million to $15 million.
But in its prospectus, the firm’s chairman, Terry Stinson, said “this new Carnegie” had addressed its problems by selling its failed solar microgrid arm EMC, and would have preliminary designs for a commercial-scale CETO within two years.”
So… according to CETO it’s economic problems are due to it’s investments into solar. Have to admit I couldn’t stop laughing.
Don’t overlook some of the funnier statements, David.
Oh yeah! Invest in green tech and get rich…
I’m sure all those University Professors demanding divestment from fossil-fuel companies will be happy to see their pension funds diverted towards such investment opportunities.
They will also get to learn something valuable, something clearly not taught anymore in many US universities. Unfortunately the price of this piece of education will, even at Ivy League schools, make their eyes water.
Meanwhile (for those NOT paying attention to the Brilliant Light Power and Dr. Mills saga), below is a time-compressed video taken during a calorimetric test of the SunCell ™ in a water bath in a real-time run of 1 hr … the input ‘fuel’ (Hydrogen via nascent water) amount was not specified, but the Hydrino reactor energy production (in Joules) is nominally 100x that of Hydrogen were it to be simply ‘burned’ with Oxygen:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7CeIbmwIVk
Running the ‘numbers’ using calculators at the link below, power is estimated (energy ‘production’ rate, J/sec) to be over 40 kW (which is nothing to sneeze at). 40 kW amounts to one big water heater (power draw of 166 Amps on a 240 V circuit.)
https://bloglocation.com/art/water-heating-calculator-for-time-energy-power
Assumptions:
a) 120 gal tank = 454 L (per video notes)
b) 1 Hour (per video notes)
c) End temp assumed 210 deg F (calculators do not assume evolving steam production or heat loss)
d) No steam production
Note: If water temp is 210 deg F at the 1 min mark (about 2/3 of the way through the 1 hr video) reactor power output (Joules/second or Watts) into the water bath is closer to 60 kW.
People who fall in love with ideas like wave energy and such like to point out how much energy is contained in ocean waves.
And such is surely the case.
There is lots of energy in still air, and even in the vacuum of space.
But it is diffuse energy, and the subject of entropy is lost on many people.
As are the details of the harsh marine environment, lifeforms that grow on any substrate, chaotic processes that tend to batter machinery, etc.
Harnessing diffuse energy is hard to begin with.
@Nicholas McGinley re: “There is lots of energy in still air, and even in the vacuum of space.”
Any where’s near that of a gallon of gasoline? How about nuclear?
“We all know…” I didn’t know.
Or.
We are raising enough capital to pay off rich scumbags like board member and former AFL commissioner Mike Fitzpatrick who setup this subsidy scam in the first place.
Wave technology, the only thing it waves goodby to is your money.
They have been following the same path that was followed in the UK to prove that wave energy doesn’t work. Remember the Salter Nodding Duck over 40 years ago?
And Pelamis, that went into administration five years ago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelamis_Wave_Energy_Converter
Experimental wave energy devices are great for generating grant money, but pretty useless at generating electricity. One of the biggest problems is merely surviving without being totally wrecked, in what is an extremely aggressive marine environment.