Environment, equity and technology

Project status: Current

This project aims to discover ways to increase the feasibility of ocean wave power machines by the dual objective of producing electricity and controlling the erosion of coastlines.

Ocean wave power is a huge potential source of electricity, and the ocean swell that carries this energy is predictable and regular. Despite this, it is not currently used at any commercial scale.

One reason for this is the upfront capital cost – ocean swell consists of waves of low frequency, and machines designed to extract energy from such waves must be very large and heavy which makes them expensive to construct and install.

However, any marine infrastructure is expensive, including breakwaters that are installed to control waves and any subsequent erosion arriving on the coast.

Ocean wave power machines can also be used for coastal protection. In extracting energy from waves, this energy is diverted from the coast, alleviating wave energy from penetrating harbours and marinas.

In this way, the economic question is not whether they can produce enough electricity to be profitable, but it is instead whether they can produce enough electricity to offset the total cost of installation to below that of the alternative, traditional breakwaters.

This ARC Linkage Project (LP180101109) is being conducted in conjunction with two industry partners (Moyne Shire Council and Mid West Ports Authority) to investigate protection from coastal erosion, as well as the protection of harbours and ports from disruptive waves.

Project status: Completed

The aim of this project was to investigate community engagement in a feasibility study by C4NET into the implementation of microgrids in two regional Victorian towns, Donald and Tarnagulla.

We conducted interviews with community members and held round-table discussions with people involved in implementing other large, technology-based projects in regional communities.

We identified that a large barrier to community engagement was a lack of basic knowledge of the technology being discussed – there was not a shared “energy literacy” between the community and the groups looking to implement the technology.

We addressed this by producing an energy literacy toolkit. This was a series of videos including narration and animation that explained the fundamental terms and concepts involved in electricity generation and transmission, and how these translated to implementing a microgrid.

These videos are hosted on the website of the Central Victorian Greenhouse Alliance. We extended this idea of using visual media for community engagement by running a two-day workshop at Tarnagulla Primary School where we aided students to produce their own explanatory videos on electricity and power generation.

We also produced a report outlining how our findings could be extended more generally to improving community engagement with technology project.

There was also a Q&A session with filmmakers at the Australian Environments on Screen and MINA Film Commissions launch. Curated and commissioned by Adjunct Professor Therese Davis and Associate Professor Max Schleser, the session was held on 24 November 2023 at the Australian Centre of the Moving Image (ACMI).