  This thesis focuses on developing advanced control methods for two industrial
systems in discrete-time aiming to enhance their performance in delivering the
control objectives as well as considering the practical aspects. The first part
addresses wind power dispatch into the electricity network using a battery
energy storage system (BESS). To manage the amount of energy sold to the
electricity market, a novel control scheme is developed based on discrete-time
model predictive control (MPC) to ensure the optimal operation of the BESS in
the presence of practical constraints. The control scheme follows a decision
policy to sell more energy at peak demand times and store it at off-peaks in
compliance with the Australian National Electricity Market rules. The
performance of the control system is assessed under different scenarios using
actual wind farm and electricity price data in simulation environment. The
second part considers the control of overhead crane systems for automatic
operation. To achieve high-speed load transportation with high-precision and
minimum load swings, a new modeling approach is developed based on independent
joint control strategy which considers actuators as the main plant. The
nonlinearities of overhead crane dynamics are treated as disturbances acting on
each actuator. The resulting model enables us to estimate the unknown
parameters of the system including coulomb friction constants. A novel load
swing control is also designed based on passivity-based control to suppress
load swings. Two discrete-time controllers are then developed based on MPC and
state feedback control to track reference trajectories along with a feedforward
control to compensate for disturbances using computed torque control and a
novel disturbance observer. The practical results on an experimental overhead
crane setup demonstrate the high performance of the designed control systems.
