Sensor control for an Oscillating Water Column plant

The Oscillating Water Column concept consists of two key elements, a turbine located in a pneumatic energy collection chamber and a doubly fed induction generator that converts energy extracted by the turbine into a form that can be returned to the network. Since the turbo-generator control requires the rotor angular velocity, removing the rotor speed sensor simplifies the hardware, with the consequent reduction in installation and maintenance costs which is even more relevant in the rough working sea conditions. In this particular case, a Luenberger based observer is considered and the effectiveness of the proposed control is shown by numerical simulations. Comparing these results with those obtained using a traditional speed sensor, it is shown that the proposed solution provides better performance since it allows a more reliable and robust performance of the plant.