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A charger at every airport
Our goal is to electrify aviation in Australia, making flying an electric aircraft as accessible to you as driving a car or booking a rideshare
Our electric aviation goals for 2030...
70 certified, active electric aircraft in Australia
4%
30 charge nodes at key airports in Australia
16%
Australian designed and built Aircraft charge solutions for unique Australian conditions
FlyOnE is not just importing the aircraft of tomorrow, training the pilots, and opening up the Air Taxi routes of tomorrow, but also building the aviation charge node network to service it all.
A complete Advanced Air Mobility network will need all of the elements mentioned above. To ensure new electric pilots have a growing network of sites to fly to for recharge, FlyOnE is working with local governments and airports to roll out infrastructure to support the next wave of air transport.During our growing service delivery process, we have learned a thing or two about charging electric aircraft in a commercial capacity.
IMPORTANT ASPECTS OF AIRCRAFT CHARGING TO UNDERSTAND
Charging an electric aircraft is NOT like refueling an ICE aircraft. As such, basic 'bowser' style charge hardware will not be an adequate solution to enabling electric aircraft activity at regional or metropolitan airports.
1. TIME BLOCKING
Electric aircraft will likely only be flying in VMC (visual meteorological conditions) for many years to come. This means all-electric aircraft operators will be flying at similar times and thus requiring recharge at similar times. The absolute best-case scenario for an electric aircraft charge cycle with average infrastructure, is 30-40 minutes, though a cycle can often take longer depending on some variables.
This means, if an airport wants to service more than 2 electric aircraft, it will need 2 or more chargers to do so practically. Given that aircraft are not small, this brings us to the next important aspect....
2. POSITIONING
Electric aircraft will primarily be operated by flight schools, private users and on-demand air charter operators. This is their best economic use case.
These types of use cases typically operate from a 'home hangar' or base-of-operations.
For time-blocking efficiency, the charge cycle will need to be active while onboarding and off-boarding or Briefing and de-briefing activities are occurring, meaning the charge cycle will occur at the operators' 'home hangar' and not at a 'bowser' in the general parking area of the airfield.
A charger will very often stay connected right up to the last moment before departure, through pre-flight checks and radio clearances and other pre-take-off activities during training missions and private flights.
3. COOLING
THERMAL MANAGEMENT, THERMAL MANAGEMENT, THERMAL MANAGEMENT
A critical aspect of operating an electric aircraft in Australia is temperature management. In Australia, we have more warmer weather to consider than most locations on Earth. When the temperature rises in the battery during a charge cycle, it will both extend the length of time required to achieve charge and deteriorate the chemical state of the battery.
As such, all FlyOnE charge nodes include integrated active thermal management to cool batteries during the charge cycle and even to pre-cool them prior to departure ensuring the maximum performance and longevity of the batteries.
Similarly, at the end of the flight mission, the batteries are in a high-temperature state, often at the top threshold of their optimal thermal envelope.
If a charge cycle were to begin in this state without off-board thermal management, it would be extended by up to 30% and also deteriorate the battery chemistry. Operators will not undergo charging under these circumstances unless absolutely necessary for emergency reasons, as it is permanently compromising the battery capacity 'State of health'.
To effectively manage this, all recharge locations will need to have integrated off board thermal management hardware such as we have already deployed at our high volume charge node locations.
The cooling system needs to be close to the plane for the efficiency of the cooling hoses (shorter length) that connect to the aircraft from the charge cart.
4. SLOW CHARGING
As anyone who has ever charged any battery will know... the slower the charge, the better the charge. This is also a strong influencing factor for battery longevity. It is critical for the economic performance of an electric aircraft to complete a slow charge at any opportunity eg. overnight.
This will allow important battery balancing, reduce unscheduled maintenance and extend the service life of the battery.
For obvious reasons, nice, new aircraft are kept inside hangars overnight and in bad weather and charge cycles cannot be conducted in exposed wet weather conditiona due to safety and hardware damage risks, regardless of how weather-resistant the charger itself is.
Therefore, every electric aircraft operator will manage their own aircraft charging at night to maintain the aircraft correctly and have it ready for operation at the next earliest VMC mission window.
5. ENERGY AVAILABILITY
A hard truth is that energy grids at regional (and even Metro) airports have not been upgraded for a very long time.
Another hard truth is that electric aircraft are very energy-demanding.
Gen 1 electric aircraft only have a 20kW charge requirement, which can be serviced by a 3 phase 32A power outlet.
As of yet, on all of our Australian airport charge node activations, not a single one could accommodate this energy requirement and we had to have upgrades installed at every site.
It is important to understand that Gen2 and Gen 3 electric aircraft will have 80-200kW power requirements, requiring major infrastructure upgrades and any charger that is installed in the near future should be able to accommodate this for a 5-10 year effective operating life.
While it is rather difficult to enable infrastructure upgrades to the grid to accommodate this level of power availability, it is very easy, cost-effective and ultimately supports renewable energy better, to install a renewable energy collection and storage upgrade on a hosting hangar/airport terminal. This solution works out cheaper in most cases, reduces the site's dependence on the grid and allows for more renewable energy to be used for both aircraft charging and site backup or general use.
This is the big area of the energy supply chain in the future of aviation that will need strong government support. Infrastructure upgrades have a substantial up front cost, and a slow return on investment, making it difficult for the private sector to justify deploying equipment at regional sites.
6. EXCEPTIONS
The aspects above are the rules of charging for electric aircraft, but, as with every rule, there are exceptions.
For instance, our fleet in Western Australia operate between Mandurah, Jandakot, Rottnest Island with Bunbury, Collie and Margaret River soon to be activated.
All of the mainland sites have a charge-cart with integrated cooling hosted by the flight school/charter operator at the airfield, allowing for active cooling on fast charges and overnight charges in the hangar for battery longevity and performance.
However, there is no hangar at Rottnest Island and as a government-run airport, it is practically impossible to make infrastructure changes to the site in any realistic timeframe.
To overcome this issue, we have deployed a self-regenerating outdoor charge-cart with 15kWh of energy storage and 1kW of Solar regeneration. This solution CAN be deployed in the general parking area of any airport and remain versatile, mobile, and grid-independent.
The current specs allow it to service the current range of Gen 1 Electric Aircraft and it is modularly upgradable to accommodate Gen 2 and Gen 3 electric aircraft.
An additional unique deployment we are planning is a water-based charge pontoon capable of receiving a landing eVTOL aircraft.
This will allow eVTOL aircraft to land near any currently operating Marina, Jetty or Quay 500ft from buildings, then the pontoon will taxi under it's own power to the disembarkation area.
The Pontoon will have on-board energy storage and thermal management hardware to support all eVTOL aircraft.
This solution allows rapid deployment of eVTOL services to any popular waterside travel hub with no fixed infrastructure upgrades and has a low demand on the grid as it will slow charge between arrivals/departures. It can also be used to service electric watercraft.
Download the mobile airport charge cart info document here
Download the marine mobile charge pontoon info document here
Second generation electric aircraft chargers 80-200kw available now
Lilypad Elevate | ECDS 3020 | ECDS 4040 | ECDS 100160 |
Solar collection capacity | 30kW | 40kW | 100kW |
Energy Storage | 40kWh | 80kWh | 200kWh |
Charger delivery | 20kW | 40kW | 160kW |
Applicable aircraft | Pipistrel ALPHA, VELIS
FlyOnE Valkyrie | Pipistrel ALPHA, VELIS. Diamond eDA40, FlyOnE Valkyrie | Pipistrel ALPHA, VELIS. Diamond eDA40, Electron 5, Joby, Vertiia, FlyOnE Valkyrie |
Approx. deployed price | 185K AUD | 249K AUD | 490K AUD |
Lilypad Elevate nodes will take many shapes depending on location and service aircraft, below and above are some visualisations.
What makes an E plane charger different?
by Richard 'Ritchie' Watson of Electro.Aero
Around 70 years ago aircraft required electrical generators. Rather than going with the common grid frequencies 50/60Hz, a higher 400Hz frequency was selected, but why?
Over longer transmission lengths, the losses at 400Hz are high but within an aircraft, they are insignificant. Increasing the generator frequency from 50Hz to 400Hz allowed it's size to shrink from that of a watermelon to a coffee cup. A rough rule of thumb is one kg of weight saved on an aircraft actually reduces the weight by 5 kg because of all the extra structure and fuel that is no longer needed to carry that kg over the range of the plane.
So it was better economically to save weight on the aircraft and offboard the complexity of a completely new set of ground support equipment to airports. It was later realised that 800Hz was actually even better, but the previous frequency had taken off so this became the standard and only a few military jets use the higher frequency today. This became one of the first and few examples of truly global standardisation. Aircraft flying anywhere in the world could count on the same infrastructure support leading to streamlined and safer operations, something so vital to maintain in aviation today.
So how do we repeat the same success now with electrical charging systems in AAM (Advanced Air Mobility)? Within the SAE International AE-7D standards committee we have about 250 leaders from around the world using requirements gathering to determine the best standards for ALL electric aviation use cases.
At the moment industry is converging on 2 standards. The first is the ARP6968 which is simple, light weight and an excellent fit for the many use cases in light electric aviation - close to passing ballot finally! The second is Joby's GEACS (Global Electrical Aviation Charging Standard) which offers twin isolated charging pins and thermal conditioning through the one connector. Whilst potentially years away as an SAE standard, this solution offers many advantages to a wide range of electric aircraft by off-boarding weight and complexity whilst maintaining strict FAA/EASA cyber security requirements. MCS is another upcoming coupler that may offer higher power charging, in an aviation specific version explored in AIR7357.
CCS1 and CCS2 are common standards for EVs but for electric aircraft are less than ideal, and their regional use is likely to fragment charging standards globally. As EV standards already exist for these couplers, some OEMs are using these in their prototypes to accelerate their path to market knowing that they will switch to global standards once released.