Luca is an Associate Professor in Electrical Machines and Drives at KTH, division of Electric Power and Energy Systems, since 2018 after 8 years at ABB Corporate Research in Västerås. He will lead theme 2 together with Francisco Márquez Fernández.
What is your focus as a theme leader right now?
Collaboration with the other themes is really important and we are always looking to become even better in collaborating. In the last call we saw three cross-thematic projects with theme 2 involvement that were funded, which is a good sign.
We also have a strong group from industry that gives very professional and good feedback and give us the possibility to test our ideas in the field.
The most important thing for academy today is to understand the demands from industry and make sure to bring that understanding into the research. It is not enough to know something in theory. You need to know what works in reality to come up with useable results.
What do you study in your research right now?
I play with multiphase machines. We want to find multiphase solutions for electric vehicles since there are limitations in voltage within many applications in e-mobility. If you want to increase the power without increasing the voltage, and at the same time maintain a manageable current level per phase, then you might instead need to increase number of phases. Multiphase systems can increase the efficiency, which of course is very relevant in electric vehicles. The multiphase system can also provide extra tolerance to faults whenever the system gets damaged. Perhaps you can limp home with a semi-functional car instead of being totally out of power.
What benefits do you see by collaborating within the centre?
Looking globally, Sweden is very small, but determined to keep up with the global competition. Companies like Volvo, Scania and others in SEC are very active within the centre, they understand the value of collaboration while keeping their unique business profile. SEC is an excellent platform for them to strengthen their leading position on the market. But Sweden also offers much more than that. We have a perfect infrastructure for our industrial partners to develop their products, with plenty of access to electricity, battery development and a political landscape that shows an interest in tagging along on the electrification journey.