Assessment of All-Electric General Aviation Aircraft

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to describe the upcoming changes that will bring the transition from piston engines to all-electric aircrafts. The article focuses on the differences in operation of small general aviation aircrafts. This topic is timely, as the first all-electric aircraft was certified by the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) in 2019. As there are no data concerning this new type of operation available, the data have been derived from other applicable sources. At first, we compared the energy consumption of the same aircraft with the piston engine, and then afterwards with the retrofitted all-electric variant. Our results focus on the difference in fuel price, which is discussed in the context of electricity price comparison with AVGAS prices. Moreover, we discuss the environmental impacts, especially concerning electricity source mix and emissions produced (we estimate both with and without life-cycle assessment). In the discussion, we compare the results and identify the benefits of an all-electric solution. Furthermore, several operational restrictions of all-electric aircrafts are discussed.

Flight Simulator’s Energy Consumption Depending on the Conditions of the Air Operation

“…The analysis did not omit the electric plane. A study by scientists from Prague was used, in which they compared the energy consumption of an electric plane with the energy consumption of an airplane with a piston engine [20]. An algorithm for determining the energy needed to drive the modernized aircraft was used.…”

Identification of flight accidents causative factors base on SHELLO and improved entropy gray correlation method

“…Some scholars also use methods such as the establishment of structural equations, bayesian networks, machine learning, and bowtie models for aircraft fault safety diagnosis or safety assessment applications [ [16] , [17] , [18] , [19] , [20] ]. Many scholars have carried out a series of studies on new energy aircraft, human factors and text mining [ [21] , [22] , [23] ], found safety voice and safety listening during aviation accidents: cockpit voice recordings reveal that speaking-up to power is not enough [ 24 ]. Many scholars have carried out a series of researches on aviation safety mining and application by using modern information technologies such as natural language processing and data mining [ [25] , [26] , [27] , [28] , [29] , [30] ].…”

Model-Based Analysis of Lithium-Ion Battery Technology Predictions in Light-Sport Aircraft

“…However, it was predicted in [14] that the required energy densities of lithium-based batteries are 600, 820, and 1280 Wh/kg to generate acceptable ranges of regional, narrow body, and wide body aircraft, respectively. Finally, it was reported in [15] that the mass of batteries with the energy densities possible today increases logarithmically with a general aviation aircraft's range capability. This is predicted to impact the effective range of such aircraft [15].…”

“…Finally, it was reported in [15] that the mass of batteries with the energy densities possible today increases logarithmically with a general aviation aircraft's range capability. This is predicted to impact the effective range of such aircraft [15]. Noting all of these critical findings, improving the battery energy densities (larger than 100 Wh/kg) in smaller-scale aircraft such as LSAs may increase the range to an acceptable level.…”