Preliminary Assessment of control strategies for a point absorber WEC system

A high power extraction in Wave Energy Converters (WECs) is achievable via costly electric and power electronics equipment. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that an appropriate choice of WEC control strategy can help to achieve maximum power extraction. Passive loading and complex-conjugate control strategies are considered and their impacts on the power performance as well as power takeoff (PTO) rating is evaluated. The overall system performance is assessed for regular waves. For a large-scale WEC system, complex and expensive power electronics system may be considered but for the operation of small-scale WECs, a simpler system is more appropriate.