Case Study: Carnegie Wave Energy achieves the world's first operating wave farm with MathWorks (MATLAB & Simulink)

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

Carnegie Wave Energy, developer of the CETO submerged-buoy wave-energy system and operator of the Perth Wave Energy Project, needed to predict mechanical loads and energy output across many sea conditions without costly physical scale models. To meet this challenge they worked with MathWorks, using MATLAB, Simulink, Simscape Fluids (and SimHydraulics and Parallel Computing Toolbox) to virtual-prototype the multidomain hydraulic and electromechanical system.

Using MathWorks tools, Carnegie built detailed Simulink/Simscape Fluids models, ran hundreds of simulations in parallel on 8–12 core machines, and analyzed field sensor data in MATLAB to validate models. The MathWorks-based approach minimized scale testing, revealed crucial design behaviors, accelerated sensitivity studies (achieving almost a 12× speedup on a 12‑core computer), and produced validated predictions of loads and performance for CETO.

Carnegie Wave Energy

Jonathan Fiévez

Chief Technology Officer