A Study on Control of Wave Energy Converter for Motion Suppression of Semisubmersible

With the development of ocean energy exploration, reliable floating platforms with very small motion are expected to develop. For instance, the maximum pitching amplitude of a floater for floating offshore wind turbine is required to be less than a few degrees. On the other hand, ocean waves contain abundance of untapped renewable energy with very high power density. Integration of floating platform with wave energy converters while reducing the structure interaction becomes significant for offshore development. In this paper, control of wave energy converters on reducing the pitch motion of a floating platform is studied. Firstly, mathematical model of the whole system is proposed. The control of wave energy converters leads to solve a constrained optimization problem. Secondly, hybrid model predictive control is presented to synthesize the controller. Finally, numerical examples are given to verify the effectiveness of the proposed controller. It is shown that the reduction of pitch motion of the platform and the wave energy extraction are compatible.