Model and Control Analysis for a Point Absorber Wave Energy Converter in Lebu, Chile

Wave energy has enormous potential and many good qualities, such as its predictability, energy density and low variability. Nevertheless, this type of energy still needs to be competitive against other types of renewable energy, like wind or solar ones. This is mainly due to its high cost. One solution to reduce the cost of wave energy is the use of control strategies. In this work, a simple point absorber based on the dimensions of an ongoing project, named Lafkenewen, is modeled with linear potential theory and the software Ansys-AQWA. Three different control strategies, reactive control, latching control and resistive control, are compared for a regular wave that represents the mean sea state of the project site location. Results show that the reactive control can achieve up to 18 kW but for unrealistic conditions. Latching control allows converting up to 4 kW showing better performance than the resistive control, which only allows up to 0.8 kW average.