MPC controller design for ISWEC

In recent years the research in energy field is developing new technologies for the extraction of renewable energy: in particular wave energy is one of the most important branch. Among the possibility, the ISWEC is one of the most promising technology. This work is divided in two principal parts: in the first part the wave prediction is studied, in order to create an accurate predictive model that permit the correct functionality of the plant; in the second part the MPC controlled is studied and developed using the model created in the first part. All the work is developed for a 3 degrees of freedom, that consider the correlation between the horizontal movement, the vertical movement and the rotation, respectively called surge, heave and pitch: this correlation is important to improve the power extraction. The aim of this work is to design a controller that permit to set automatically the control value with the purpose to extract the maximum power without an external prediction of the wave forces and respect the input constraints due to mechanical limits of the components.