Model predictive control of a sea wave energy converter: a convex approach

Abstract This paper investigates model predictive control (MPC) of a sea wave energy converter(WEC). A novel objective function is adopted in the MPC design, which brings obvious benefits: First, the quadratic program (QP) derived from this objective function can be easily convexified, which facilitates the employment of existing efficient optimization algorithms. Second, this novel design can trade off the energy extraction, the energy consumed by the actuator and safe operation. The effectiveness of this MPC strategy is demonstrated by numerical simulations.