Publications

A summary of the Advanced WEC Dynamics and Control project

Coe, Ryan G.; Bacelli, Giorgio B.

This report serves as a comprehensive summary of the work completed by the "Advanced WEC Dynamics and Controls projecr during the period of 2013-2019. This project was first envisioned to simply consider the question of designing a controller for wave energy converters (WECs), without a complete recognition of the broader considerations that such a task must necessarily examine. This document describes both the evolution of the project scope and the key findings produced. The basic goal of the project has been to deliver tractable methodologies and work flows that WEC designers can use to improve the performance of their machines. Engineering solutions, which may offer 80% of the impact, but require 20% of the effort compared to a perfect result (which may be many years of development down the road) were preferred. With this doctrine, the work of the project often involved translating existing methods that have been successfully developed and applied for other fields, into the application area of wave energy.