A robust control approach to the problem of the sea wave energy conversion

The thesis project is oriented to the ISWEC (Inertial Sea Wave Energy Converter). The ISWEC is an electrical system that converts the incident wave power into electrical energy. The basic work principle is to use the gyroscopic effect in order to take in motion a shaft connected to a PTO unit(Power Take Off), so damping such rotation with a proper torque the electrical energy is obtained. The main goal is to find a controller through the Robust Control approach with H-inf techniques, based on reference tracking error, such that the produced power is comparable to the previous MPC controller, that presents optimal conversion energy but high computational requirements. In order to find a plant that can approximate the real one, the Set-Membership approach is used, with a set of input-output data available from a Simulink scheme of MPC case study. In the work different cases are proposed to show the main results and the limits of this approach.