Case Study: Carnegie Clean Energy achieves the world's first operating grid-connected wave farm with MathWorks (Simulink and MATLAB)

Carnegie Clean Energy Designs and Builds the World’s First Operating Wave Farm

Carnegie Clean Energy, developer of the CETO wave-energy technology and operator of the Perth Wave Energy Project, needed to size mechanical and hydraulic components and predict system performance across many sea states without building costly physical prototypes. To model this complex, multidomain system and analyze hundreds of configurations, Carnegie used MathWorks tools—primarily Simulink and Simscape Fluids—together with MATLAB and Parallel Computing Toolbox.

Using MathWorks software, Carnegie built virtual prototypes of buoys, pumps, tethers, hydraulic circuits and long pipelines, ran hundreds of simulations based on 30 years of sea data, and validated models against field sensor data. The MathWorks-based solution minimized scale testing, revealed crucial design insights, and accelerated sensitivity studies—achieving nearly a 12× simulation speedup on a 12-core machine—while supporting an operating wave farm that generates up to 240 kW and informing development toward 1 MW buoys.

Carnegie Clean Energy

Jonathan Fiévez

Carnegie Clean Energy