Energy-maximizing control of pitch type wave energy converter M4

Abstract

This paper presents a case study of designing a linear non-causal optimal controller to the pitch type wave energy converter (WEC) M4. M4 is a multi-float multi-mode-motion WEC with complex dynamics and relatively high capture width compared to traditional WEC designs. There are mainly two motivations for this study. The first one is to demonstrate that, while existing model-based advance control methods are mostly investigated on simple wave energy converters (WECs) (e.g. single point absorber), they are also effective on WECs with more complex dynamics like M4 provided that a control-oriented model is properly built. The second one is to showcase that with the future incoming wave information explicitly incorporated into the controller, the energy conversion of WEC can be significantly improved.