The paper presents a novel technique to control the current of an electromagnetic linear actuator fed by a multilevel IGBT voltage inverter with dynamic energy storage. The actuator is designed for dynamically driving an engine valve in an automotive application. The proposed technique shows very promising results through simulations using real system data. In order to provide short response time, high precision and low switching frequency a regulation with model predictive control (MPC) is proposed. Energy storage in a capacitor by energy recovery utilizing mechanical kinetic energy is provided. MPC is able to manage a proper level of capacitor voltage in order to guarantee high dynamic current and disturbance compensation. © 2005 IEEE.