Empowering wave energy with control technology: Possibilities and pitfalls

With an increasing focus on climate action and energy security, an appropriate mix of renewable energy technologies is imperative. Despite having considerable global potential, wave energy has still not reached a state of maturity or economic competitiveness to have made an impact. Challenges include the high capital and operational costs associated with deployment in the harsh ocean environment, so it is imperative that the full energy harnessing capacity of wave energy devices, and arrays of devices in farms, is realised. To this end, control technology has an important role to play in maximising power capture, while ensuring that physical system constraints are respected, and control actions do not adversely affect device lifetime. Within the gamut of control technology, a variety of tools can be brought to bear on the wave energy control problem, including various control strategies (optimal, robust, nonlinear, etc.), data-based model identification, estimation, and forecasting. However, the wave energy problem displays a number of unique features which challenge the traditional application of these techniques, while also presenting a number of control ‘paradoxes’. This review articulates the important control-related characteristics of the wave energy control problem, provides a survey of currently applied control and control-related techniques, and gives some perspectives on the outstanding challenges and future possibilities. The emerging area of control co-design, which is especially relevant to the relatively immature area of wave energy system design, is also covered.