pwr-controlPower Electronics & Control Systems LaboratoryAbout
Davide Bagnara
Power electronics and control systems engineer. Twenty years of industrial R&D on high-power drives and grid-tied converters, from topology and control design to embedded firmware and certification.
I design and model power converters and their control: high-power drives and grid-tied converters in the 250 kW – 1 MW range, isolated DC/DC stages with wide-bandgap devices, PMSM vector control, and the embedded firmware that runs it all on STM32 and TI C2000 targets. My work covers the full development cycle — topology selection, simulation, gate-driver and control electronics, embedded C, and EMC certification.
The material on this site is personal research, independent of my employer and shared as is: Simscape models built to behave like the real hardware, control code written in C so that the same source runs in simulation and on the target, and LaTeX notes that document the theory behind them. Between 2019 and 2023 I also taught Advanced Control Engineering at MCI; the lecture projects and the two companion textbooks are on GitHub.
I currently work as Lead Proposal Engineer at Secom Power (Milan area), sizing custom high-power converters for industrial and research applications. Earlier I spent many years in the drive development of a ropeway manufacturer, where the patent on active damping for ropeway drive systems comes from, and consulted on SiC drives, thyristor rectifiers and flying-capacitor inverters.
Based in Sterzing, South Tyrol, Italy.
- Experience20 years
- Power range250 kW – 1 MW
- Conference papersPCIM Europe, ISIEA
- PatentActive damping, ropeway drives
- TeachingMCI, 2019–2023
Contact
Expertise
Power converter design
High-power drive topologies (VSI, NPC, T-type), grid-tied converters, thyristor rectifiers, DAB and CLLC isolated DC/DC stages. SiC and GaN wide-bandgap devices.
Advanced control
FCS/CCS model predictive control, sliding mode, passivity-based control, H∞, LPV, adaptive control. Lyapunov-based observers for PMSM in the dq frame.
Simulation and HIL
MATLAB/Simulink and Simscape with custom components, dSPACE hardware-in-the-loop, PLECS, LTspice, DIgSILENT PowerFactory for grid-level studies.
Embedded firmware
STM32 (G4 series) and TI C2000 in embedded C: HRTIM, ADC, CORDIC-accelerated transforms; FPGA on Xilinx Zynq-7000; EtherCAT slaves.
Hardware design
Gate driver and control electronics, PCB design with KiCad and Altium Designer, EMI analysis and EMC certification.
Publications and IP
Papers at PCIM Europe and ISIEA. Patent on active damping for ropeway drive systems. Technical documentation in LaTeX.
Publications and intellectual property
- A Flipped Unified Power Quality Conditioner for Active Distribution Networks: Topology, Modelling, and Control Strategy — IEEE conference format, PDF.
- Conference papers at PCIM Europe and ISIEA.
- Patent on active damping for ropeway drive systems.
- Two textbooks: Advanced Control Engineering and Theory of Electromechanical Devices — see Technical notes.
Tools
MATLAB / Simulink / Simscape (custom .ssc components), PLECS, LTspice, dSPACE, DIgSILENT PowerFactory; embedded C on STM32 and TI C2000, STM32CubeIDE, Xilinx Zynq-7000; KiCad, Altium Designer; LaTeX, git.
Get in touch
Open to technical collaborations, consulting engagements and academic exchanges in power electronics and control systems. Questions about a model or a note are best asked through the issues of the relevant repository; everything else by e-mail.