Comparison of control strategies applied to the Archimedes Wave Swing

Abstract

This paper addresses the Archimedes Wave Swing (an off-shore wave energy converter, that produces electricity from sea waves). It compares the performances of latching control (a discrete, highly non-linear, intrinsically sub-optimum control strategy), of reactive control, of phase and amplitude control (two optimum control strategies that involve non-causal transfer functions, which have to be implemented with approximations, thus rending the control sub-optimum), and of feedback linearisation control (a non-linear control strategy). From extensive simulations it is concluded that the latter performs clearly better irrespective of the sea state.