Adaptive Model Predictive Control of Wave Energy Converters

In this paper, we propose an adaptive hierarchical model predictive control (AHMPC) scheme for wave energy converters (WECs). This AHMPC enables adaptive tuning mechanism for a model predictive control (MPC) strategy by estimating the dynamics of a WEC online, so that it can recover from performance degradation of a WEC due to the dynamics variations at different sea conditions. The proposed AHMPC consists of two layers: On the top layer, an efficient cascaded estimation algorithm is developed to online identify and update the WEC model adaptively according to the change of sea states; on the bottom layer, a specially tailored MPC controller is implemented based on the updated WEC model to maximize the energy output subject to constraints for safe operation requirements. Numerical simulations are provided to show the efficacy of the proposed AHMPC scheme.