Predictive control of a wave energy converter with wave prediction using differential flatness

This paper presents a fast constrained optimization approach, which is tailored for nonlinear model predictive control of wave energy converters (WEC). The advantage of this approach relies on its exploitation of the differential flatness of the WEC's dynamics. This can reduce the dimension of the resulting nonlinear programming problem (NLP) derived from the optimal control of a WEC based on the pseudospectral method. The alleviation of computational burden using this approach promotes an economic implementation of nonlinear model predictive control strategy for WEC control problems. The method is applicable to nonlinear WEC models, nonconvex objective functions and nonlinear constraints, which are commonly encountered in WEC control problems. A case study demonstrates the efficacy of this method.