Norway's plan for a fleet of
electric planes
By 2040, Norway has promised all of its short-haul
flights will be on electric aircraft. It could revolutionise the airline
industry.
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By Stephen Dowling
By Stephen Dowling
22 August 2018
In
July 2018, Norway’s transport minister Ketil Solvik-Olsen and Dag
Falk-Petersen, the head of the country’s airport company Avinor, took a very
special flight together.
In front
of the press they squeezed into the cockpit of a two-seat plane made by the
Slovenian company Pipistrel. With Falk-Petersen at the controls, the pair took
a short flight lasting a few minutes around Oslo in an Alpha Electro G2.
The flight’s novelty is partly explained by the
aircraft’s name; it’s entirely powered by electricity. Battery-powered aircraft
have made the leap from fantasy to drawing board to production. But it’s just
the start.
Solvik-Olsen and Falk-Petersen weren’t just flying this
plane for a lark; it was to underline one of Norway’s most dramatic plans to
cut down on its carbon emissions in the decades ahead. By 2040, Norway
intends all short-haul flights leaving its airports to be on aircraft
powered by electricity.
It’s one of the most far-reaching promises yet to cut
down on aviation’s contribution to greenhouse gas emissions. But there is one
major barrier – there are no airliner-size electric-powered aircraft being
built yet.
Both
Solvik-Olsen and Falk-Petersen had to go on strict diets before the flight
The electric aircraft market currently consists of small
aircraft; the one the Norwegian pair flew barely has room for two fully grown
adults to fly together (both Solvik-Olsen and Falk-Petersen said they went on
strict diets before the flight). But Falk-Peterson says that will change very
quickly.
Norway is a large country which has a multitude of small, short-haul airports (Credit: Alamy)
He says that a few years ago, Norway’s aviation chiefs
had a sceptical view of all-electric aviation.
“Then about three years ago our board of directors went
down to Airbus, in Toulouse,” says Falk-Peterson. “Airbus told us they had been
doing a lot of work in this area already. And Boeing, through [aircraft maker] Zunum Aero and also with Nasa. That’s why we
decided to have a programme to electrify the flights in Norway.”
Norway is a good place for such experiments. Much of the
country’s terrain is mountainous and there are many offshore islands, which
means there are a lot of short-haul flights (Avinor runs no fewer than 46
airports in Norway). Road, rail or boat travel often take a lot longer than a
short flight, especially during the winter when snow and ice can block roads
and tracks.
Norway
wants aircraft makers to come up with a 25-to-30-seat airliner, powered by
electric motors
“A lot of the flights here are only 15 to 30 minutes,”
says Falk-Peterson, “and we have all sorts of mountainous terrain. That’s why
we decided to set up a programme where we can actually have aircraft makers
tender for it in one or two years.”
Norway wants those aircraft makers to come up with a
25-to-30-seat airliner powered by electric motors, with the first of them
introduced into service as early as 2025.
“We are sure that an aircraft like that can be
electrified,” says Falk-Peterson.
Electric-powered aircraft are enjoying a boom at the
moment; last year, the consulting firm Roland Berger found there were more than
100
electric-powered aircraft projects underway around the world.
Slovenia’s Pipistrel is only one of them. Spokesman Taja Boscarol
says the company are now making “several four-seaters, the most notable
probably being the Taurus
G4, the first fully electric four-seat aircraft in the world.
“Since then we developed some other four-seat prototypes
with alternative means of propulsion, such as a hydrogen-powered four-seat
aircraft. We have also developed a hybrid engine for a four-seat aircraft. The
engine is fully functional, and the aircraft will take off in 2019, according
to plan.”
Pipistrel says they see training aircraft – two and
four-seaters like the ones they currently build – as the bulk of the electric
plane market for the near future, but they also intend to build a 19-passenger
“hybrid fuel cell commuter aircraft” by 2025.
Pipistrel will have some competition. Zunum Aero, based
in Kirkland, a suburb of Seattle, is another company planning to produce the
kind of aircraft Norway wants to see on its short-haul routes.
We’ve
looked at what the others are doing in the industry, and we’ve learned from
them – Ashish Kumar, Zunum Aero
Founded in 2013, Zunum Aero has received investment from
airliner giant Boeing, and has been working on a range of ever-bigger and
heavier aircraft.
Its CEO Ashish Kumar says the company was instantly
intrigued by Norway’s plans, which came as part of a wider programme to try and
cut emissions from transport.
“We’ve been in this space for five years now,” Kumar
says. “We’ve looked at what the others are doing in the industry, and we’ve
learned from them.”
Zunum Aero initially has plans for a 12-seat short-haul
airliner they intend to fly by 2022, and a 50-seater aircraft with a range of
1,000 miles by 2027. And their plans don’t end there. “A 100-seat, 1500-mile
aircraft we think will be viable by the late 2020s,” says Kumar. “We can get to
what Norway wants to do.”
The ambition is all the more interesting given the
challenges that continue to face electric-powered airliners. Aircraft carrying
dozens of passengers – and their luggage – require an enormous amount of energy
to get in the air and stay aloft. Today’s airliners are lighter and more fuel
economical than any generation before them, but no fuel apart from kerosene
currently has an energy density – the amount of energy it is able to store –
high enough for airliner use.
Batteries can obviously store electricity, but it was
previously thought that so many would be needed to power a small airliner that
the weight would be prohibitive. Kumar, however, says “batteries are in some
ways the least of the problems”.
He says the biggest challenges are around the rest of the
electronic systems. Can batteries reliably and safely maintain power so that
flight-critical systems have power at all times? And how do you deal with the
heat generated by all those batteries?
One solution may be to reduce the overall size of the
planes being used for short-haul flights. At the moment most aircraft are built
“largely for medium to long-haul flights. They’re designed for flights as long
as 4,000 miles but 80% of them are under 1,500 miles. These are
medium-to-long-haul aircraft but they’re flying short-haul.” Kumar says the
time has come to stop using these larger, heavier, more expensive aircraft on
such short routes.
All-electric
planes will have benefits beyond emissions – they will need smaller runways,
which means they can use smaller airports
“For shorter distances, you design a different aircraft.”
Kumar says.
Both Zunum Aero and Avinor say that using all-electric
planes will have benefits beyond emissions – the smaller aircraft will need
smaller runways, which means they can use smaller airports. They will be
quieter too, which means that they can be used earlier in the morning and later
at night. And if the weight of batteries can be reduced the planes are likely
to be lighter, meaning they will require less power.
That final factor may mean lower running costs and
therefore cheaper tickets – and cheaper tickets are a powerful incentive for
change within the aviation industry (as the rise of low-cost airlines has
proven).
Kumar says current aircraft are already generating an
enormous amount of energy to power their onboard systems – for instance the Boeing 787 Dreamliner can
generate as much as 1.3MW, which is enough electricity to power about 850
houses. “You don’t have to match the energy density of kerosene,” he says, “but
you do have to make it work.” The big challenge, he says, will be trying to
raise that power generation to around 5MW – the power that might be needed for
a plane carrying 100 passengers, for instance.
Falk-Peterson says it’s likely that at least the first
generation of Norway’s greener planes will use hybrid technology. Under
aviation safety laws, aircraft have to carry enough reserve fuel to ensure they
can divert to an alternative airport in case of problems. It is the kind of
system – think of the Toyota Prius hybrid, now a stalwart of app-taxi services
like Uber – that kickstarted the electric car. Batteries could be charged and
stored until needed, and swapped with the spent batteries which are then
charged and used on a different aircraft.
Already,
Airbus is looking at an electric aircraft that can carry 100 passengers 1,000km
by 2030
Norway’s plan, if it goes ahead, will be felt outside its
borders. If all flights lasting fewer than 90 minutes are flown with electric
planes, that will mean those planes are landing in other cities in Scandinavia,
and beyond. Aircraft makers will have to sell these aircraft to more countries
than just Norway to make them viable.
“Already, Airbus is looking at an electric aircraft that
can carry 100 passengers 1,000km by 2030, says Falk-Peterson.
Infrastructure will be one of the biggest challenges.
Norway is a rich country blessed with good transport links, but even in a
country this well-developed, transporting kerosene is complicated and
expensive. Norway will have to work out if the charging stations its new
aircraft will need will be hooked to the grid, or whether they will use
alternative means to generate the electricity.
In the meantime, Norway’s first steps to an all-electric
short-haul fleet are happening.
Falk-Peterson’s flight for the press was not a one-off.
The trained pilot took part in another demonstration last week. “It was a
15-20-minute flight, and I did 12 of them on the day. And we didn’t have to
wait around for charging even once. We’d taken off fully charged, after a
20-minute flight we’d return, and we’d have used 25% of our battery.
“We’d park the plane, a technician would start charging
it, and we’d go off and do the debrief and then brief for the next flight, head
back to the aircraft and you’re recharged like you were for the start of the
previous flight. We think the technology is already here.”
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