Chill, there is a line in the excerpt from the ARENA site which...

Chill, there is a line in the excerpt from the ARENA site which you did not highlight and which is interesting.

"ARENA does not fund activities that are commercially viable without ARENA support."

Now, Teeskay and others have posted how rapid the process of bringing Protean progressively to commercialisation has been, backed up by some impressive announcements.

Is it possible that management (at some earlier time) approached ARENA, and the response went along the lines . . .

"Say guys, you seem to have a clever and simple idea here, and one that wouldn't qualify for our support because it is technically not complex enough to need it. In our view, you could test and develop this quickly, and introduce it to market pretty seamlessly and see how it goes from there. ARENA's commitment is to renewable technologies that could never get that far without our support."

Of course this is only a Sunday morning hypothetical and just my imaginings and nothing else. But if it did happen more or less, I would ask you how would you announce that to the market ?

Supporters of Protean like your good self and me would see that that as a huge positive - commercial production, revenue and profit being the primary objective - i.e. we are so good, we are ready to go and don't need external help.

On the other hand, others would focus only on it as a back-handed form of rejection, and don't forget the negative posts when SHE withdrew from the US wave energy competition in order to focus on it's development priorities and the funding initiative with Caltech (which it succeeded in getting).

My suggestion of a question to management at the AGM was only intended as a very general one . . .

"Has the company explored every avenue of support and promotional schemes for renewable energy by Government to assist in the advancement of this technology ?"

You ask the question, and the company answers - no other agenda other than for information purposes.

With Protean appearing to be so close, any opportunity with ARENA may have past. Seed money for specific community projects like I have thrown out there (for comment only and a bit of fun) might have to be sourced in other ways, whether by other government renewable energy commitments, local community interests, sustainable lifestyle initiatives, crowd-sourcing, WHO, carbon credits for other corporate interests and so on and so on.

Think of the billions of dollars that are poured into renewable schemes around the world every year to support their existence - wind energy being a major one. Or as the conservative commentariet like to describe as "seeming to do, rather than doing" - i.e. high tax-payer contribution/high technology cost.

All I am saying is, be careful what you wish for. Protean is moving quickly for a reason, it is an outstanding idea, and may be game-changing. Great ideas are our greatest assets.

My simple analogy is, you have had a perfect day at the beach, and the tide has come in at your feet, and you never saw it coming, and now it's everywhere ! My hope is that Protean will prove this true.

Cheers BC