Solar Impulse plane to circle globe on just solar and storage

Am ambitious project to try and “do the impossible” – and fly a plane around the world without a single drop of fuel will begin in late February.

The flight route for the Solar Impulse 2 was unveiled today in Abu Dhabi, where the circumnavigation will begin in just over a month, and all going well, finish at the same place in June or July.

To do that it will stop in 12 countries (see below) having flown via Oman, India, Myanmar and China, and then undertaking long flights across the Pacific to Hawaii and the west coast of the US, and then on to New York, and then across the Atlantic to Europe and north Africa and back to Abu Dhabi.

The flight on a plane with the wingspan of a Boeing 747 and the weight of a family car will be a test of technology – and the ability to power the flight only with solar and battery storage, and of human endeavour, with some flights across oceans to go 5 days and nights without a break.

piccard etc

“This is to prove that the impossible is possible,” said co-founder and co pilot Bertrand Piccard (above left) part of a family with a long history of adventurer. And, say Piccard and fellow pilot Andre Borschberg, it will bring a strong political message.

“It is to show that the technologies we need to address climate change exist today,” Piccard says.

“Many governments say we need more R&D, we need to wait more, before we have renewable energies in their country. Forget that, we have today enough energy efficiency technologies to halve the consumption of the world, and renewable technologies that can provide half of the rest.

“For all those people who do not believe it is possible, we want to show that a plane can fly around the world with no fuel day and night. No one can ever say that renewable energy is just an anecdote for green people.”

The first version of Solar Impulse achieved the first night flight (26 hours) in 2010, and its first intercontinental flight in 2012. It flew across the US in 2013.

solar impulseThe latest version has a wingspan of 72 metres, and weighs 2,300kg. It has 17,248 solar cells built into the wing to supply four 17.4hp electric motors, running at more than 94 per cent efficiency. Those cells will also recharge lithium batteries weighing 733kg that will allow the aircraft to fly at night, and therefore have virtually unlimited autonomy.

The project is backed by an array of major industrial giants, such as ABB, Schindler, Omega, Solway, Google, Swiss Re, Bayer Material Science, Altran and Swisscom. The Abu Dhabi renewable energy company Masdar is hosting the HQ and providing logistical support. All have said that the R&D put into this project have already been translated into commercial products, including solar cells, battery storage, installation, and coatings.

The flight will not go un-noticed. Piccard and Borschberg have deliberately chosen a route that takes it to the world’s most populated areas, including India, and the sprawling metropolis of Chongqing in China.

The flight will be broadcast live, with five cameras on board, at its website, and plans a massive social media campaign, and educational stops during the trip.

Piccard is the latest in a “dynasty” of explorers and scientists whose feats include flying non-stop around the world in a balloon. The Star Trek character Captain Jean-Luc Picard, was named after his great uncle, one of the pioneers of the ballooning industry.

 

impule flight

The route, as this graph below shows, involves four trajectories that will last at least 100 hours. The plane will fly at between 50km and 100km an hour, and at about 9,000 metres.  The speed reflects decision about efficiency and storage potential. The plane needs to generate enough power to fly the plane during the day, store enough to go through the night and still have some left over for the following day.

“I’m more afraid to live in a world that burns one billion tonnes of oil every hour that destroys the planet, and pollutes the environment, rather than fly solar-powered planes,” Piccard said.

impulse flight path

 

Comments

8 responses to “Solar Impulse plane to circle globe on just solar and storage”

  1. Rob G Avatar
    Rob G

    A brilliant and very public way to prove solar to the likes of Abbott. I hope this gets the coverage it deserves in the media, it’s time to put an end to the solar myths.

  2. Andy Boothroyd Avatar
    Andy Boothroyd

    Amazing, what an inspiration. Small correction, I think we born closer to 1million tonnes of oil an hour, not a billion. Still unbelievably bad I know….

  3. Pedro Avatar
    Pedro

    Wouldn’t it be great if they can get the speed up to the same as the earths rotation at the equator and ditch most of the battery bank.

    1. Motorshack Avatar
      Motorshack

      High marks for creative thinking, but unfortunately the math is disappointing.

      The circumference of the Earth at the equator is 24,901.55 miles. Divide that by 24 hours in the day, and you get a speed of rotation, at the equator, of 1,037.56 mph. Also, the required power goes up as a function of the cube of the speed, so, a ten-fold increase in speed requires on the order of a thousand-fold increase in power. This is why supersonic jets need to be refueled every couple of hours. They can’t possibly travel more than a couple of thousand miles on one fill-up.

      On the other hand, even a ten percent improvement in speed would entail a bit more than a thirty percent improvement in solar collector efficiency, which would have a huge – indeed, probably revolutionary – economic impact on the entire global energy industry. So, merely by being a very demanding test platform for such small, incremental improvements, this aircraft could still have a very big economic impact. It can’t possibly be a mere accident that big companies like ABB are sponsoring the project. They smell future profits, I’m sure;

      Finally, in summer time, the closer to the pole you are, the longer your days will be, and also the fewer miles you will have to fly to go “around” the world. (At the pole itself a person can face every longitude simply by pirouetting in a full circle, without traveling any distance at all.) Also, if you fly north of the Arctic Circle (in northern summer), and south of the Antarctic Circle (in southern summer) then you will be flying in perpetual sunlight. So, by choosing the optimum route, there might actually be a market for slow-speed, but extremely cheap transport of light-weight, high-value cargoes (e.g. diamonds, but, more importantly, exotic materials for making high tech products).

      One last thought comes to mind. If you were not carrying human passengers, then legally you might not need to carry the weight of the pilots and their life-support systems, which would promptly free up about 500 pounds in lifting capacity for commercial payload. The necessary auto-pilot technology has been around for some decades now, and most airline flights are long since done on auto-pilot for everything but take-off and landing. The human pilots are there mostly for backup in case the auto-pilot fails. Airliners can also take off and land on autopilot, but that is often done manually in order to keep the human pilots’ skills from getting too rusty. Nor are such auto-pilots necessarily very expensive; the cheapest systems are well within the reach of hobbyists building sophisticated model aircraft. One such plane has even made a trans-Atlantic flight from the U.S. to Ireland some years ago (although in that case it took six tries to do it).

      In short, you asked a great question. It really stimulated my thinking on the point., as you can see.

      1. Pedro Avatar
        Pedro

        Should have known better since I did a couple of years of aero engineering. Also flying against the prevailing westerly winds.

        Unmanned solar powered air freight is a good idea. I would go with solar powered winged airships to provide extra lift. Not a bad idea if you want to ship high value items like medicines into inaccessible regions.

        1. Motorshack Avatar
          Motorshack

          I have to disagree with “should have known better”. If you had realized the flaw in the idea yourself, you would not have made your initial comment, and thus would not have stimulated a nice round of brainstorming. As it is, we’ve now got an interesting combination to think about: solar power, airships, automated controls.

          To that combination I would add satellite communication links. If U.S. Air Force pilots can use drones to bomb some poor slob on the other side of the world, then someone ought to be able use similar technology to deliver freight in unmanned aircraft. Already Amazon is experimenting with delivery drones, but they are not solar-powered, nor are they lighter-than-air.

          Again, high marks for creative thinking. I wouldn’t suppress interesting ideas, even if some of them turn out to be half-baked.

          In any case, it’s been fun chatting.

          1. Pedro Avatar
            Pedro

            Good to see you posting again, you have been a bit quiet on this site for a few months. I thought you may have lost some interest or found some other interesting forums. Let me know if you have come across so decent sites that are worth a read.

            The military come up with some pretty cool stuff except that it all tends to be for the purpose of killing people more efficiently.

          2. Motorshack Avatar
            Motorshack

            Well, I still read at least the headlines here most days, and I still think Giles Parkinson is doing a fine job, but most of the trends he is reporting on have become quite stable and predictable.

            In particular, renewable energy technology is now being adopted at a non-linear rate, and it is only a question of time before it replaces a great deal of fossil fuel use, if not all of it. Moreover, given the number of comments that I have already made, I find that I have little to add these days.

            The only reason I commented this time was because your initial comment did provoke an interesting line of thought on my end, so my motive was chatting with you in particular, as opposed to any attempt to edify the rest of the readers. Absent your comment I would not have said a thing.

            Also, despite superficial appearances in this forum, I am actually a very serious introvert. I spent some time as a young child in a very tough, inner-city neighborhood in Detroit, and I soon learned it was much smarter to sit at the back of the crowd and let the big swinging dicks in the group broadcast their intentions without opposition. Meanwhile, I kept my own counsel. That created a tactical advantage for me that soon led to a huge improvement in the quality of my life, and it has been my basic operating style ever since.

            This, in turn, is why I do not really worry about the antics of the professional political class or the now-infamous One Percent. They are obnoxious enough, but, like the young bullies back in Detroit, they do not remotely control everything, much less all the time.

            In addition, the rules they write for their own advantage can actually be used by any citizen, because those rules really are the law of the land. So, even when my personal goals are in direct opposition to those of the ruling classes, I still get most of my results simply by applying their rules for my own purposes. That takes a little creativity sometimes, but mostly it comes down to stuff that anyone could learn to do.

            In terms of the interests on this forum, I have a very small carbon footprint, my monthly budget is about $500, I have thousands of dollars in savings, and I live a more comfortable and worry-free lifestyle than even the rich folks. After all, unlike the average billionaire, I do not have to worry about some criminal snatching my kids, holding them for ransom, taking the money, and then killing them anyway.

            I’ve made comments of this sort many times over the last three years, but almost no one seems to take them seriously. I suppose that most people see the $500 monthly budget and jump to the conclusion that I must live in total squalor, so they tune out immediately.

            However, what does not seem to register is that I have everything that any middle class person would consider a necessity (and quite a few luxuries, as well), but I get it all for pennies on the dollar, and in many cases at no cost at all. In addition, my methods are all as legal as church on Sunday.

            In any case, as the environment becomes ever more degraded, and the rich folks continue to push the global economy in quite unsustainable fashion, the day will come when most people will start thinking (at least partially) the way I do. They won’t have any choice.

            So, if people are not interested in hearing useful suggestions in a timely fashion, then I will save my breath and let them learn the same lessons in a much harder school.

            That might sound spiteful, but it’s not, in that I also believe in the sovereign right of every person to live their life as they see fit. That is how I prefer to live my own life, and I would not oppose anyone else doing the same. Within very broad limits there is a lot of room for everyone to do as they please, and with rather little conflict – provided only that we give each other a bit of mutual respect. To paraphrase Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes slightly, my right to swing my fist really does stop at the end of your nose.

            So, having invested three years in the conversation on this forum, I find that I have very little in the way of additional thoughts on the subject.

            In short, it’s been fun chatting, but it’s time to go back to minding my own business. Also, I have other projects where the time and mental resources are better invested. Again, that is not intended to slight you or anyone else. It’s just that life is finite, and I am already in my mid-sixties. So, there’s no time to waste.

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