CETO was designed and developed by Western Australian company Seapower Pacific, which was acquired by London-listed Renewable Energy Holdings in February, just before the device's launch last March.

REH chief executive Mike Profitt told the West Australian newspaper yesterday the trials proved the invention worked, as it had produced both electricity and desalinated water.

He said the company would now work towards developing a medium-scale trial that uses multiple, smaller units, instead of one super-sized device. If these trials, which are expected to start next year, are successful, the company will move towards building a commercial-scale plant.

A possible site west of Garden Island, near Rockingham in WA, has already been earmarked for a commercial project, which is expected to produce 300-1300MW of power and 330 megalitres of fresh water per day.

More than $5 million has already been spent on research and development for the technology, since CETO was invented in 1999 by WA businessman Alan Burns.

Last month, EnergyReview.net spoke with CETO project manager Mike Parfitt, who said the wave generators would also be marketed overseas.

“In Europe and the UK especially, there are bigger incentives for companies to get into renewable energy,” he said at the time.

“We believe the demand is there for a product such as ours and I expect we’ll receive more interest once we start marketing it. We’ve kept a fairly low profile up until now, because we wanted to ensure the technology actually worked.”

In early May last year, Seapower sank the CETO wave energy generator off Fremantle. It was installed on the seafloor to harness and convert energy from ocean waves into electricity and produce desalinated water as a by-product.

Unlike other methods, which pipe seawater ashore before harnessing its power and losing substantial amounts of energy in the process, CETO captures the power of the water onsite. As waves move over the top of the unit, they press down on a disc that transmits the force to pumps inside, which deliver the pressurised water to the shore.

CETO's other main advantage comes from its location on the seabed. Most other methods of wave-powered electricity generation involve placing devices on the surface of the sea, where they are exposed to the damaging effects of stormy weather and could pose a threat to ships.