Control strategies for OWC wave power plants

The present work deals with the improvement of OWC-Wells turbine-generator systems by adequately choosing the applied control scheme. For this purpose, two different control strategies are presented and compared. In the first one, the control system does appropriately adapt the slip of the induction generator according to the pressure drop entry. The second control strategy consists of a traditional control of the OWC air valve. It is demonstrated that the proposed rotational speed control design adequately matches the desired relationship between the slip of the induction generator and the pressure drop input, whilst the valve control using a traditional PID controller successfully governs the flow that modulates the pressure drop across the turbine.