Control Strategy of an Impulse Turbine for an Oscillating Water Column-Wave Energy Converter in Time-Domain Using Lyapunov Stability Method

Abstract: We present two control strategies for an oscillating water column-wave energy converter (OWC-WEC) in the time domain. We consider a fixed OWC-WEC on the open sea with an impulse turbine module. This system mainly consists of a chamber, turbine and electric generator. For the time domain analysis, all of the conversion stages considering mutualities among them should be analyzed based on the Newtonian mechanics. According to the analysis of Newtonian mechanics, the hydrodynamics of wave energy absorption in the chamber and the turbine aerodynamic performance are directly coupled and share the internal air pressure term via the incompressible air assumption. The turbine aerodynamics and the dynamics of the electric generator are connected by torque load through the rotor shaft, which depends on an electric terminal load that acts as a control input. The proposed control strategies are an instant maximum turbine efficiency tracking control and a constant angular velocity of the turbine rotor control methods. Both are derived by Lyapunov stability analysis. Numerical simulations are carried out under irregular waves with various heights and periods in the time domain, and the results with the controllers are analyzed. We then compare these results with simulations carried out in the absence of the control strategy in order to prove the performance of the controllers.