Faedo, Nicolas and Bussi, Ulises and Pena-Sanchez, Yerai and Windt, Christian and Ringwood, John (2022) A Simple and Effective Excitation Force Estimator for Wave Energy Systems. IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Energy, 13 (1). pp. 241-250. ISSN 1949-3029

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Abstract

Wave energy converters (WECs) need to be optimally controlled to be commercially viable. These controllers often require an estimate of the (unmeasurable) wave excitation force. To date, observers for WECs are often based upon ‘complex’ techniques, which are counter-intuitive in their design, additionally requiring an explicit model to describe the excitation as part of an (augmented) system. The latter imposes strong assumptions on the design of each observer, while also implying an additional computational burden associated with the necessity of augmenting the WEC model to include the dynamics of the input.We propose a simple and effective excitation force estimator based on linear time-invariant (LTI) theory, without the need for an explicit model of the input. In particular, we re-formulate the unknown-input estimation problem as a tracking control-loop, so that a wide-variety of LTI design techniques (arising from either classical or modern control theory) can be used to compute an estimate of the excitation force. We demonstrate performance, simplicity, and intuitive appeal of the proposed observer, by means of a case study based on a realistic computational fluid dynamics simulation, comparing the technique against a large set of WEC observers, showing that the approach is able to outperform available estimators.

Item Type:	Article
Keywords:	model reduction; moment-matching; wave energy converters; optimal control;
Academic Unit:	Faculty of Science and Engineering > Electronic Engineering Faculty of Science and Engineering > Research Institutes > Centre for Ocean Energy Research
Item ID:	16111
Identification Number:	https://doi.org/10.1109/TSTE.2021.3108576
Depositing User:	Professor John Ringwood
Date Deposited:	16 Jun 2022 11:59
Journal or Publication Title:	IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Energy
Refereed:	Yes
URI:	Publisher
Use Licence:	This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available here

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