Passive Model Predictive Control on a Two-Body Self-Referenced Point Absorber Wave Energy Converter

Dan Montoya, Elisabetta Tedeschi, Luca Castellini and Tiago Martins
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Dan Montoya: Department of Electric Power Engineering, Norwegian University of Science and Technology NTNU, Elektrobygget O.S. Bragstads Plass 2E, E, 3rd Floor, 7034 Trondheim, Norway
Elisabetta Tedeschi: Department of Electric Power Engineering, Norwegian University of Science and Technology NTNU, Elektrobygget O.S. Bragstads Plass 2E, E, 3rd Floor, 7034 Trondheim, Norway
Luca Castellini: UMBRAGROUP SpA, Via V. Baldaccini 1, 06034 Foligno, Italy
Tiago Martins: K2 Management, Rua do Montepio Geral, N 4 A 1500-465 Lisboa, Portugal

Energies, 2021, vol. 14, issue 6, 1-21

Abstract: Wave energy is nowadays one of the most promising renewable energy sources; however, wave energy technology has not reached the fully-commercial stage, yet. One key aspect to achieve this goal is to identify an effective control strategy for each selected Wave Energy Converter (WEC), in order to extract the maximum energy from the waves, while respecting the physical constraints of the device. Model Predictive Control (MPC) can inherently satisfy these requirements. Generally, MPC is formulated as a quadratic programming problem with linear constraints (e.g., on position, speed and Power Take-Off (PTO) force). Since, in the most general case, this control technique requires bidirectional power flow between the PTO system and the grid, it has similar characteristics as reactive control. This means that, under some operating conditions, the energy losses may be equivalent, or even larger, than the energy yielded. As many WECs are designed to only allow unidirectional power flow, it is necessary to set nonlinear constraints. This makes the optimization problem significantly more expensive in terms of computational time. This work proposes two MPC control strategies applied to a two-body point absorber that address this issue from two different perspectives: (a) adapting the MPC formulation to passive loading strategy; and (b) adapting linear constraints in the MPC in order to only allow an unidirectional power flow. The results show that the two alternative proposals have similar performance in terms of computational time compared to the regular MPC and obtain considerably more power than the linear passive control, thus proving to be a good option for unidirectional PTO systems.

Keywords: wave energy converter; model predictive control; passive control; two-body point absorber (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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