A Pitch Wave Force Prediction Algorithm for the Inertial Sea Wave Energy Converter

In this paper we introduce a pitch wave force predictor for a wave energy converter. The designed predictor is composed of two subsystems. First, we design a virtual sensor in order to provide a real-time estimate of the pitch wave force acting on the converter, from measurements provided by a set of on-board sensors. Then, we build an autoregressive predictor on such a virtual measurement to predict the future value of the wave force over a finite prediction horizon length. Simulation results, performed by applying the proposed algorithm on a first-principles based Simulink model of the considered sea wave energy converter, demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.