Just as I was thinking about how disappointing it was that the electric de Havilland Beaver project discussed in Another aircraft motor seemed to have gone nowhere in more than a year, this announcement arrived in my inbox (I had subscribed to updates from Harbour Air):
The message links to the Harbour Air website:
Harbour Air, magniX and H55 Partner for The World’s First Certified All Electric Commercial Airplane
The original test aircraft was disappointing, because while it had a viable motor, it had a hopeless battery. The battery had minimal capacity, filled the passenger/cargo space, and used up most of the weight capacity, so the test aircraft is not usable for transportation. For more than a year, there was no better battery installed... but they appear to be moving on now.
For aviation enthusiasts, an interesting aspect of this project is that the intention is "to certify the world’s first electric Beaver (eBeaver) commuter airplane through a supplemental type certificate (STC) program." That means that any DHC-2 Beaver operator get the conversion installed and be approved for commercial service without an individual approval process. This is the sort of thing that should be done by Viking Aviation (the aircraft's type certificate holder), but maintenance and upgrade businesses do routinely get STC's for modifications.
In the area of battery technology, it is interesting to note that the release refers to "redundant battery monitoring at the cell level", but not battery redundancy (such as two parallel packs). On the other hand, technical information in this release is questionable because it also claims the H55 battery will "expand the eBeaver’s balance to weight ratio and endurance"; that's nonsensical, and is presumably the result of incompetent editing of a statement about expanding the centre of gravity envelope, improving the balance, increasing the payload to aircraft weight ratio or power to weight ratio, and extending the endurance.
In another aircraft, H55 is installing battery modules in the wings, as shown in a photo on their Products page. There is no indication yet of where the eBeaver battery packs would be located, but to avoid a major structural redesign I assume that internal wing volumes will not be used. H55 provides no meaningful technical specifications, about any of their products, on their website. It appears that they use modules which are cubic in shape, roughly one litre in volume, but that's just from looking at photos with no reference for scale and no assembly detail.
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The message links to the Harbour Air website:
Harbour Air, magniX and H55 Partner for The World’s First Certified All Electric Commercial Airplane
The original test aircraft was disappointing, because while it had a viable motor, it had a hopeless battery. The battery had minimal capacity, filled the passenger/cargo space, and used up most of the weight capacity, so the test aircraft is not usable for transportation. For more than a year, there was no better battery installed... but they appear to be moving on now.
For aviation enthusiasts, an interesting aspect of this project is that the intention is "to certify the world’s first electric Beaver (eBeaver) commuter airplane through a supplemental type certificate (STC) program." That means that any DHC-2 Beaver operator get the conversion installed and be approved for commercial service without an individual approval process. This is the sort of thing that should be done by Viking Aviation (the aircraft's type certificate holder), but maintenance and upgrade businesses do routinely get STC's for modifications.
In the area of battery technology, it is interesting to note that the release refers to "redundant battery monitoring at the cell level", but not battery redundancy (such as two parallel packs). On the other hand, technical information in this release is questionable because it also claims the H55 battery will "expand the eBeaver’s balance to weight ratio and endurance"; that's nonsensical, and is presumably the result of incompetent editing of a statement about expanding the centre of gravity envelope, improving the balance, increasing the payload to aircraft weight ratio or power to weight ratio, and extending the endurance.
In another aircraft, H55 is installing battery modules in the wings, as shown in a photo on their Products page. There is no indication yet of where the eBeaver battery packs would be located, but to avoid a major structural redesign I assume that internal wing volumes will not be used. H55 provides no meaningful technical specifications, about any of their products, on their website. It appears that they use modules which are cubic in shape, roughly one litre in volume, but that's just from looking at photos with no reference for scale and no assembly detail.
