From The Vancouver Sun
Somebody check me here, but doesn’t this seem like a whooooolllllleeeee lot of wishful thinking?~ctm
A B.C. airline and a Seattle-area engine maker say they’ve found a quicker route to electrification by converting a small bush plane with batteries and an electric motor
Jeff Bell, Victoria Times Colonist
Updated: March 26, 2019
A transition from seaplane to e-plane is set to begin.
Harbour Air is embarking on what is believed to be a world first, adding an electric plane to its fleet — a zero-emission aircraft powered by a 750-horsepower electric motor.
The company has 42 planes and 12 routes, and operates from centres such as Victoria, Vancouver and Seattle. It is North America’s largest seaplane airline, serving 500,000 passengers on 30,000 commercial flights every year.
“The intent is to eventually convert the whole fleet,” said Harbour Air’s founder and CEO. Greg McDougall. of the move to electric planes. “It would be a staged situation because the range of the (electric) aircraft presently, with the present battery capacity, would be around a half an hour with a half-an-hour reserve.
“But that’s changing very rapidly with the development of the battery technology.”
The first plane to be converted will be the six-passenger DHC-2 de Havilland Beaver, which is used across Harbour Air routes.
“The first one would be a prototype, which is basically proving the technology for Transport Canada and getting toward certification,” McDougall said.
Harbour Air is taking on the electric-plane venture with Washington state’s magniX — a company specializing in creating electric propulsion for air travel. The partners anticipate conducting the first flight tests in November.
McDougall said nobody has ever flown a fully electric commercial flight.
“If you think about it, it’s the evolution of transportation toward electric propulsion,” he said. “The internal combustion engine is all but obsolete, really, for future development.
HT/Toto
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The key is that battery electric is actually cheaper to operate for short run 1-200km trip services, cost per kWh of the energy used on the plane is only about $0.2/kWh including battery life costs, vs $0.25-0.35/kWh if powered by an IC engine running on Aviation fuel including engine maintenance costs.
With long/skinny (high aspect ratio wings) ranges of up to 4-500km are possible. There are 5 passenger electric VTOL planes being tested now with ranges of 200km (120miles) plus 30minute reserve. For the ferry-replacement mission that this business has that sort of range is enough, they might need extra planes to provide the same number of flights, but cost of borrowing is very low these days making that less of an issue than energy and maintenance costs.
A plane with battery swapping would make fast turn-around feasible, or add a stand-by generator for emergency range extension (not needed on vast majority of trips) – so that in effect still running on batteries almost always.
You need to realise how Aussie R&D works. Come up with some project. Mention “Greenhouse gases “, “climate change” etc . Apply for government R&D grant. Get grant. Pay yourselves handsomely for several years until grant money runs out. Fold company due to inability to find suckers, er, backers to continue. Rinse and repeat.
Maybe… A lot of assumptions here, but conceivably you could get about 400kg payload and fly for an hour. This doesn’t account for the fact that an airplane gets lighter as the fuel is used.
There, I built a mathematical model. Therefore it can fly…
DeHavilland Beaver
FuelCons 19 gph at cruise. About 6 hours.
Content 44.65 MJ/kg
density 690 kg/m^3
Gal/m^3 264.162 gal/m^3
m^3/hr 0.071925561 m^3/hr
kg/hr 49.62863697 kg/hr
sec/hr 3600
j/hr 2215918641 j/hr
watts 615532.9558 W gross
efficiency 0.28 guess
watts usable 172349.2276 W net
cruise hp 231.0311362 hp
hp 450 standard
flight time 1 hour (1/2 hour flight, 1/2 hour reserve)
efficiency electric 0.9
joules stored 689,396,910.48 J
lithium storage min 0.36 MJ/kg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_battery
lithium storage max 0.875 MJ/kg
lithium storage used 0.875 MJ/kg
kg batteries 787.8821834 kg
current fuel capacity 95 gal
fuel weight 6 lb/gal
fuel weight 570 lb
fuel weight 258.5034014 kg
payload freed 258.5034014 kg
payload added 787.8821834 kg
net payload increase 529.378782 kg
total payload std 953 kg
new payload 423.621218 kg
new payload 934.0847856 lb
“The intent is to eventually convert the whole fleet,” said Harbour Air’s founder and CEO. Greg McDougall. of the move to electric planes. “It would be a staged situation because the range of the (electric) aircraft presently, with the present battery capacity, would be around a half an hour with a half-an-hour reserve.
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