The IMPACT project created a toolbox that could be used to apply a control methodology easily, allowing controllers to be designed early in the WEC development process, making the design of the WEC and the controller concurrent activities.

By producing a toolbox, point absorber developers and researchers would be able to benefit from the work as controllers would be applicable to a wide range of WECs rather than being particular to a single device. To further help the sector it was decided to make the toolbox open source and free to use.

The focus was on the development of this toolbox. Cruz Atcheson were subcontracted to use their wave energy experience to design four “exemplar” WECs to use as demonstration WECs for the toolbox and to specify the conditions for simulation testing. Controllers were then developed for each of the exemplar WECs. Using these controllers as the basis, the toolbox was then developed.

This tool simplifies and automates the process of controller design as much as possible. The controllers were tested via WECSim simulations. With the toolbox developed, it was then tested by designing a controller for a fifth WEC which was based on information provided by industrial contributors Carnegie and Trident.

The design and testing of this fifth controller was completed alongside the FEED studies for associated controller and physical test hardware.