Carnegie has secured an $800,000 grant from the Australian government for the study and design of projects focused on high penetration renewable energy microgrids incorporating wave energy on Mauritius and the neighbouring island of Rodrigues.

The island nation has a focus on developing renewable energy technologies, its blue economy, and domestic water security and believes Carnegie's ground-breaking CETO generation technology is ideal for its purposes.

The total value of the design activities is $990,000 of which the Mauritian Ministry of Finance and Economic Development will contribute $800,000 from the Australian government with the balance being contributed in-kind from Carnegie.

The project aims to develop a renewable energy roadmap for Mauritius, assess the Mauritian wave energy resource, identify a preferred site for a commercial CETO wave energy project and a microgrid-powered desalination plant on Rodrigues, building on the experience of Carnegie's Perth Energy Project, which is generating power off Garden Island, Western Australia, and which will be expanded into a microgrid project of its own.

"Access to clean, renewable energy is critical for Mauritius and other small island states, and is a key to unlocking their economic prosperity," Australia's High Commissioner to Mauritius, Susan Coles, said.

The initiative follows the signing of an agreement between Carnegie and the Mauritius Research Council in June.

Carnegie has a similar agreement with the Seychelles, and it is hoped there will be some complementary overlaps.

Carnegie's CEO, Dr Michael Ottaviano, said the Australian government "should be commended on demonstrating its commitment to renewable microgrid solutions that have the potential to deliver high resilience clean power and freshwater for islands".

The Garden Island project will be first wave-integrated renewable microgrid project in the world, and the first to be connected to an electricity network.

It will consist of the CETO 6 units that are being finalised, an existing reverse osmosis desalination plant on Garden Island and will add an additional two megawatts of peak of solar photovoltaic power generation and sufficient energy storage to allow safe, stable and reliable interaction with the electricity grid.

Construction is expected to begin in 2016.

The CETO 6 units are designed to generate 1MW each, four times the capacity of the CETO 5 technology that is in use already.

Protean

Stonehenge is acquiring the Protean wave energy converter technology, which is comprised of buoys that float on the water, rather than being affixed to the seafloor.

The company, which is aiming to change its name to Protean Wave Energy following the capital raising, is also targeting the same 60 small island nations in the world that mostly still use high cost and high carbon emitting diesel generators for power.

The Protean system is designed to be small and inexpensive to manufacture and install, and converts the wave energy into compressed air, that then drives a motor located onshore.

The company ultimately hopes to demonstrate that Protean wave farms can be easily deployed in the ocean, close to shore, at relatively low cost and with minimal disruption to the environment.

Stonehenge is targeting demonstration deployments and a commercial pilot wave farm.

It is working towards an early 2016 deployment of a 30 buoy demonstration array off the coast of Bunbury, WA's second largest city.

The buoys have already been funded and the fabrication process is underway.

In the US the company recently agreed with Cal Poly, a major University in California, to plan for a demonstration buoy at their 1km long, state of the art, marine research pier before potentially scaling up the operation to become a supplier to the pier.

In addition the company has secured an option over a Maldivian company whose management has approval to install a wave farm at Hanimaadhoo Island.