A study on model predictive control of wave energy converters

The energy output of a wave energy converter (WEC) depends largely on the control strategy of its power take-off (PTO) system. This paper proposes a model predictive control (MPC) for a point-absorption wave power converter system, which has the advantage of maximizing the power conversion without violating the system constraints. The study highlights the impact of the input weighting factorrin the cost function on reactive power. Furthermore, a method to shorten the constraint horizon is proposed to address the challenge of high computational demand in MPC. Simulation results demonstrate that increasingrwithin a specific range can effectively reduce reactive power. Additionally, shortening the constraint horizon significantly decreases computation time without substantially compromising energy output.