Shabara, Mohamed (National Renewable Energy Laboratories), Abdulkadir, Habeebullah (IOwa State University), Abdelkhalik, Ossama (Iowa State University)

Control of Wave Energy Converters

Scheduled for presentation during the Regular Session "Wind and wave energy production systems" (ThuS3T4), Thursday, July 11, 2024, 15:30−15:50, Session room 4

12th IFAC Symposium on Control of Power & Energy Systems, July 10-12, 2024, Rabat, Morocco

This information is tentative and subject to change. Compiled on March 6, 2025

Abstract

Wave energy conversion has been receiving a significant growing interest in the past several years. While there are several concepts for converting wave power into electric power, the cost of the electric power harvested from ocean waves remains high. One of the main challenges, yet receiving less attention, is the control of the wave energy converter (WEC). This paper presents a treatment for the WEC control problem within the context of optimal control theory, resulting a systematic development for an explicit expression for a control that maximizes the harvested energy while meeting operational constraints such as the maximum device stroke, and the maximum control force. The control presented here can also be adjusted to meet device design constraints such as a limitation on the amount of reactive power available from the power take-off (PTO) unit; this feature enables a control co-design for the PTO unit. Numerical simulations are presented in this paper for demonstration.