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First full size electric aircraft flies.


Paul Marsh
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Andy E

I agree. Major changes to lifestyle and infrastructure are required to be even carbon neutral.

If the majority of energy comes from renewable the world will have to operate at a much lower rates in both creating and using the things that use electricity.

For instance can the world really withstand the effects of the current levels of mass travel or put another way humans are 'energy expensive' things to mechanically move around. They are even fairly energy costly just to maintain.

Now that's a cheery Christmas thought.

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There have been several electric aircraft recently including a racing aircraft. But it isn't going to help one little bit!

Think about this:

The world population has doubled since 1976.

By now all the kids born then will be getting to be grandparents. and all their offspring want cars, heating, holidays abroard etc.

Now fully electric airliners might, just might, make a difference.

I think we should go back to sailing ships for global travel!!!

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Posted by Andy Ellis 1 on 11/12/2019 20:58:35:

Fantastic achievement, but.. does it really reduce carbon emissions overall? I'd like to know how we produce enough electricity for widespread use of electric vehicles without producing carbon.

I can not comment on the carbon footprint of making an IC engine and refining the fuel Vs making an electric motor and batteries. But what I do know having spent a lot of time working with industry in Vancouver and British Columbia is that with hydro, a lot of their electricity is low carbon, so in this case, yes it does work.

It is certainly not the first full scale electric aeroplane, the link states it is the first commercial one.

Regarding views held about generation of electricity, I believe that most people do not appreciate how much the balance has swung in the UK, there is now very little coal firing, some large stations have converted to biomass etc. See electric generation split at Ofgem generation data. This shows that the nuclear plus renewables is approximately 50% of the total UK generation now. What is also noticable on this is the reduction in electricity demand over the years, increases in efficiency and reductions in heavy industry.

Since 2018 the UK has been running for short periods of time without any coal firing, with runs of several weeks at a time being achieved, with the only use probably being peak winter demand. See UK no coal days.

Edited By PeterF on 12/12/2019 09:19:41

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Yea Peter, but how clever is it to convert coal fired stations, to biomass fired stations, and then ship the biomass from the Americas. And continue to use a technology, nuclear fission reactors, where after 50 years still haven't worked out how to depose of the waste products, or stop them blowing up for that matter. And the UK has a fairly fragile grid system thanks to reliance on non constant energy supply systems, which resulted to large scale power cuts last winter.

Nice plane though. Might work, it's one of those short hop tourist flight things is it not. Might still question if it's a good idea to fly at all.

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The UK grid isn't fragile because of non-constant energy supplies, it's more that renewables especially wind are situated where the grid infrastructure is limited, there are plans to upgrade the grid to take this into account.

One of the reasons wind turbines are often stopped in windy conditions is hat they produce too much electricity and could overload the grid locally.

As for these electric planes, it seems to make sense for these shorthaul flights in this area. They are not just tourist flights but a quick way to get to relatively remote locations, so quite useful for the local communities.

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Posted by Don Fry on 12/12/2019 10:54:32:

Frank, a power generating system is built, surely, with and infrastructure to supply power to where needed, not with plans to connect it when someone gets round to it or supplies the budget to do it.

Agree, but you stated that the grid was fragile because of the non constant supply systems, it's not, it's because the power is being put in somewhere else. The main reason they are building new nuclear power stations next to old ones is so they can use the same connection. To take advantage of wind power we need to upgrade the grid to those areas to tap into that. We had to do it with nuclear because they are all by the coast to use seawater for cooling, just a shame they picked the wrong piece of coast for the best use of offshore wind turbines.

BTW anybody more interested in the electric DHC Beaver there's another video here

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so let's keep burning fossil fuels until - what? Until it's too late to start working towards better solutions? Nobody is denying that we are just starting down a road that may just possibly improve things for our Grandchildren. As a great man once said " why dont you knock it off with those negative waves moriarty ? "

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Posted by Paul Marsh on 12/12/2019 17:45:50:

As I've said on another thread, imagine plugging 26 million cars into the National Grid, where it's already on its near max, talk about burying the needle!!!cool

Electric cars won't work, period, there is not enough reserve to meet the demand.

There's a "spare" 15 GW of power generation available each night for around 6 hours, this works out at around 85 miles per car per day, assuming 26 million cars.

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I thought it would be fun to apply the same methods we use for evaluating electric power trains to the full size version. Unfortunately the Magnix product pages do not provide details for battery and speed controller to go with the motor. A few bits however.

Motor and drive electronics are liquid cooled. The magni500 has a power rating of 560kW and nominal voltage of 540V, implying peak current exceeds 1000A - that would get hot!

Propeller bolts direct to the rotor, so no gearbox, with a base speed of 1900 RPM.

It seems Magnix are taking the one big motor, not multiple small motors, path.

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Distributed electric propulsion in a new design seems to offer most in the way of improved aerodynamic efficiency as well as structural benefits and weight saving. Retrofitting an existing (old) design like the Beaver with electric propulsion significantly reduces noise, which is a real advantage when operating a floatplane from urban harbour areas like Vancouver and Seattle, - albeit a niche application.

The electric Pipistrel apparently offers great cost advantages compared with an IC basic trainer, as much of it's life is spent in the aerodrome circuit with students at the controls (circuits and bumps!), - or 'pattern' as our American cousins call it. Quieter too, so another niche application for a full sized electric aircraft.

So the driver here is not necessarily carbon reduction but operating cost and noise reduction.

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  • 5 months later...

More significant progress on the full size electric front.

eCaravan

Some very significant progress too in terms of providing redundancy in the motor and power supply. This outfit certainly appear to have their act together whilst pushing the boundaries...

idd

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There are a good number of short hop flights around the world for which the electric Cessna Caravan would already be the best solution. For passenger safety, propellers must be stopped when boarding and disembarking, which drastically shortens the service intervals on turboprops; hence the reason Aurigny in the Channel Islands hung onto their piston-engined Trislanders for so long. Air-cooled piston engines have their own problems with lots of starting and stopping, so on short inter-island routes electric aircraft are already at an advantage. Two or more motors would be desirable though as electric motors, and speed controllers do fail.

The 90 second Westray/Papa Westray route may be the first to be electrified in this country, Loganair were toting this a couple of years ago, and with the help of Cranfield Aerospace are converting one of their Islanders.

Project Fresson - Electric Britten Norman Islander

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That's really interesting about the BN Islander. I'd love to see a full size leccy one as it's one of my favourite aircraft.

Lots of good stuff going on in Orkney generally in terms of renewables, use of hydrogen for ferries etc. Fully Charged on YouTube have done two or three programs up there that are worth a look.

Fully Charged have an annual show for all things electric/renewables which this year was supposed to be at Farnborough. All electric aircraft were supposed to be exhibiting for the first time. Hopefully it will take place in the near future.

Cheers

idd

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