Title
Flow Control in Wells Turbines for Harnessing Maximum Wave Power.
Abstract
Oceans, and particularly waves, offer a huge potential for energy harnessing all over the world. Nevertheless, the performance of current energy converters does not yet allow us to use the wave energy efficiently. However, new control techniques can improve the efficiency of energy converters. In this sense, the plant sensors play a key role within the control scheme, as necessary tools for parameter measuring and monitoring that are then used as control input variables to the feedback loop. Therefore, the aim of this work is to manage the rotational speed control loop in order to optimize the output power. With the help of outward looking sensors, a Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) technique is employed to maximize the system efficiency. Then, the control decisions are based on the pressure drop measured by pressure sensors located along the turbine. A complete wave-to-wire model is developed so as to validate the performance of the proposed control method. For this purpose, a novel sensor-based flow controller is implemented based on the different measured signals. Thus, the performance of the proposed controller has been analyzed and compared with a case of uncontrolled plant. The simulations demonstrate that the flow control-based MPPT strategy is able to increase the output power, and they confirm both the viability and goodness.
Year
DOI
Venue
2018
10.3390/s18020535
SENSORS
Keywords
Field
DocType
wave energy,sensing applications,power management,energy harvesting,Wells turbines,Mutriku power plant
Power management,Control theory,Control theory,Maximum power point tracking,Energy transformation,Electronic engineering,Wave power,Flow control (data),Turbine,Control system,Engineering
Journal
Volume
Issue
Citations 
18
2.0
1
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.37
5
5
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Jon Lekube120.77
Aitor J. Garrido22211.11
Izaskun Garrido3218.99
Erlantz Otaola410.37
Francisco Javier Maseda563.40