“Electric flight is becoming a tantalizingly close reality for shorter-range service,” writes ZDNet. “But increasing passenger carrying capacity and flight times to economically accommodate longer routes will require a major rethink of crucial components.”
pgmrdlm quotes their report:
GE is partnering with the NASA Advanced Air Vehicles Program on a new generation of inverter using GE’s silicon Carbide technology. The project aims to deliver a next gen inverter that provides significantly increased power density over existing technology but is small enough to support electric flight.”We’re essentially packing 1 MW of power into the size of a compact suitcase that will convert enough electric power to enable hybrid-electric propulsion architectures for commercial airplanes,”says Konrad Weeber, Chief Engineer of Electric Power at GE Research. “We have successfully built and demonstrated inverters at ground level that meet the power, size and efficiency requirements of electric flight. The next step is to build and demonstrate one that is altitude ready….”
GE makes an ideal development partner for NASA because it’s a vertically-integrated, one stop shop. GE designs everything from chips to system level architecture, which makes optimizing a final design to conserve space and weight much more practical over cobbling together a system from multiple contractors.
of this story at Slashdot.
Source:: Slashdot