Wave hub is still on CCE website and they are still utilising plymouths testing facilities so hopefully they are maintaining some sort of relationship to wave hub and haven't "pulled out" as the article suggests. The article saying "pulling out" is a little concerning but is it to create a more interesting read.
Keep in mind that wave projects or energyR&D projects take a long time to implement then verify, essentially work occurs if they get grants or raise capital so you get fits and spurts, much the same as university researchers - you don't raise money you don't develop. Unfortunately there's a long time before you can get a commercial product ready - as you've seen it taken years for Carnegie to get to where we are and it's been 4 yrs since ceto 5, and another 18mths to Albany... Hopefully as ceto progresses and they get ceto 6 in water at Albany they will start to look at a ceto6.1 in wave hub to verify one design can be used in multiple locations without issues.
When politicians get involved they think in relation to terms - which are around 3 yrs minimum. So obviously political timescales and wave development timescales don't align and you will get issues like this where people think it's a waste of money as the facility is sitting idle. It would be nice if the politicians and community had an appreciation that wave (energy) RD takes time. If they didn't build wave hub there would be no facility to research in a unified environment. While it is better for politicians etc to build these things and have them filled with multiple companies paying rent etc that expectation isn't always a reality.
In a very short period of time - I think facilities such as wave hub and Albany will have multiple companies vying for a connection point to test their equipment. We need some major impetus (catastrophic enviro disaster) to get more money behind alternatives to PV, The world's alarm is going but we keep pressing snooze, hopefully we will still make the deadline.
CCE Price at posting:
3.6¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
