Norway Will Make All Short-Haul Flights Electric By 2040 (independent.co.uk)

Norway's public operator of air transport plans to make all short-haul flights in the country entirely electric by 2040. "State-owned Avinor, which operates most of Norway's civil airports, is aiming to be the 'first in the world' to switch to electric air transport," reports The Independent. From the report: "We think that all flights lasting up to 1.5 hours can be flown by aircraft that are entirely electric," chief executive Dag Falk-Petersen told AFP. The announcement confirms Norway's reputation as a leader in electric power. In a 2017 report, Avinor announced that in cooperation with the Norwegian Sports Aviation Association and major airlines, it had set up a development project for electric aircraft. Avinor said it had "called for Norway to be established as a test arena and innovation center for the development of electric aircraft." Avinor intends to reduce aircraft greenhouse gas emissions in the short term by phasing in biofuels in the coming years, and then build on these reductions by phasing in electric planes.

Comments

Nope

[Anonymous Coward]

"Flight 666, I know you're at 1% battery, but maintain flight level 3 5 0 while we land more prominent flights."

Re:Nope

[Rei]

The funny thing is, electric aircraft can regenerate on descent. If for some strange reason you "ran out of power" in the air, yes, you'd have to make an emergency landing, but it would be an emergency powered landing. Unlike the unpowered landing a combustion-powered aircraft landing has to make if it runs out of fuel.

Re: Nope

[ShanghaiBill]

2040 is 22 years from now. So some politician gets publicity and greenie support while needing to budget nothing, negotiate nothing, and pay no consequences since he will be retired long before anything happens.

A lot can change in 22 years, so by 2040 electric flights may actually make sense, but that won't be because of any political pronouncements. It is nerds that change the world, not politicians.

Re: Nope

[ceoyoyo]

You can probably fly pretty much anywhere in Norway and to the capitals of her neighbours in that amount of time. I live in Canada, which is huge, but most of the traffic is on ~1 hour short haul routes.

Personally, I'd wait until I had a few years experience with electric aircraft in a variety of environments and weather conditions before I decreed liquid fuel to be passe.

2040 is still a ways off.

Re: Nope

[ShanghaiBill]

BTW, how many kwhr do they plan to stuff into these things in how many minutes in order to turn their aircraft around for a return flight?

You can refuel as fast as a jet if you use liquid H2 feeding into fuel cells. That still counts as "electric".

Liquid H2 has three times the energy density of jet fuel. 140 MJ/kg for H2, vs 43 MJ/kg for jet fuel. A fuel cell is twice as energy efficient. So that gives you a total of six times the range per kg of fuel.

Re:Nope

[jshackney]

Chip hasn't exactly been active on that blog for a while. Did he ever regenerate more than 2%? The drag on this system would be tremendous. I think it would make a better speed brake than a power regeneration system. In my aircraft, I have to descend at least at a 6-degree angle (or greater) in order for the weight of the plane to drive the N1. And that's a mostly free turbine (it does turn an accessory box for hydraulic and electric). I can't imagine putting a heavy electric-generating load onto a propeller system and recovering enough energy to do more than 60-90 seconds of modest powered flight. Perhaps that would be enough to make that one final correction on landing, but if it's not enough to do a go-around, it's just not enough.

Re:Nope

[Rei]

It certainly steepens your descent profile, but the scenario in question was the plane running out of power while circling. And even a couple minutes worth of propulsion at landing makes a world of difference (2% of a 90 minute flight = nearly 2 minutes).

but if it's not enough to do a go-around, it's just not enough.

Seriously, you're demanding go-around capability on emergency, out-of-"fuel" landings?

Re:Nope

[joe_frisch]

All aircraft can trade potential energy (altitude) for range. Even in an electric, rather then use the engines as generators it would be more efficient to feather the props and make use of the improved glide.

Its a way that aircraft are fundamentally different from cars and why electric airplanes don't get the same sort of efficiency win.

You could use regenerative breaking rather than putting out drag devices (spoilers and similar) but those are generally used for a small percentage of flight time because they are inefficient.

Amazing

[hawk]

A timeline to switch over before the first successful prototypes been demonstrated . . .

hawk

Re:Amazing

[iamhassi]

I was thinking the same thing. Has there been any successful electric planes made yet?

Re:Amazing

[Rei]

I assume you're kidding. People have been flying electric light aircraft since 1997, when the Alisport Silent Club added an electric takeoff option. The fastest manned electric plane, the 330 LE, goes 340 kph. For the low-end consumer, you can get an Electraflyer-ULS for under $60k. While it has a 2 hour flight time, it's more like a powered glider, of course, with a very low cruising speed. For a bit more ($104k) you can get a 2-seater a Pipistrel Alpha Electro with a cruising speed of 200 kph and a range of 600km.

Re:Amazing

[Rei]

Quite to the contrary, I think it's absurdly pessimistic. People always underestimate S-curves. They did it with wind, they did it with solar, people are in various phases of realizing that they did it with EV passenger vehicles, and they're actively doing it with electric road transport, electric marine transport, and electric aircraft.

There's several companies close to offering electric puddle jumpers. Today. It's not going to take 22 years to transition.

Re:Amazing

[Richard_at_work]

I don't, i think it's wildly optimistic.

The problem with switching an aircraft over to electric power involves a metric which isn't really that much of an issue with cars or boats - weight.

Batteries weigh the same at the start of the flight as they do at the end of the flight - so the aircraft has to carry more weight further.

It also has to land with that extra weight, each and every time.

So the airframe needs to be stronger, which inevitably means more weight.

In airline terms, weight is everything. Boeing and Airbus get to pat themselves on the back when they remove a single metric tonne of weight from an aircraft such as the 787 or A350, so when you take an aircraft such as an ATR-72 and tell it to fly around and land with an extra 1.5 tonnes of weight for it's entire lifespan, it's going to be an issue.

22 years to move to an all electric platform in a 1.5 hour sector goal is a huge ask, imho.

Re:Amazing

[sysrammer]

Civil Aviation Authority - Norway

An administrative agency responsible for ensuring safe and efficient operation of civil aviation. Issues regulations, lays down standards for civil aviation activities in Norway, grants licences and operating permits to persons and companies intending to conduct aviation and related activities. Oversees compliance with regulations and conditions.

Re:Amazing

[joe_frisch]

The numbers you give for the Pipisterel are for the gas version. The electric has a 1 hour endurance. Cruise speed not listed, but no more than 200km/h and probably lower for max efficiency.

Re: Amazing

[Anonymous Coward]

Tesla isn't the first mass produced electric car, merely the first with a 300 mile range. Renault and Nissan were in the business before, and the latest offerings have 230 mile range, but were only about 80 a decade ago.

Re:Amazing

[theweatherelectric]

Yes. They have.

Re:Amazing

[vtcodger]

"How long do you think the lead time for commercial aircraft is?"

Based on China's Comac C919 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ) , a decade -- maybe a bit more.

But overall, I think you're correct. When you try to scale up a small scale demo, not everything scales by the same factor. Scaling an electric model plane up to an airliner surely is NOT just a matter of multiplying all the specs by 60.

Caveat -- I am in no way shape or form an Aeronautical Engineer. But neither, I suspect, are the folks pushing/defending this scheme.

Are they sure they don't mean

[chispito]

Are they sure they don't mean "Norway to make all short-haul flights trains by 2040?" And, yes, I am aware of Norway's geography, it just seems like electric passenger flight is... uncertain at best.

Re:Are they sure they don't mean

[Rei]

Yes, I prefer my airplanes to be filled with nice safe hydrocarbons. They never burn.

EVs have a lower per-km rate of fires than gasoline cars (various figures suggest around 1/5th the rate). Why would it be any different with aircraft? Furthermore, it's much easier to make components redundant with EVs. Electric motors are light, batteries packs are easy to isolate from each other with no extra weight penalty, etc. In one design NASA has been working on there's a huge number of small props on the wing; they're only run at full power at takeoff, but beyond redundancy, they provide a huge amount of extra lift, greatly reducing takeoff distance. So far, though, they've only built a wing testbed ;)

It's not difficult

[WillAffleckUW]

We've had the capability to do this for quite a while, at least on the military side.

Remember, without massive tax subsidies and tax exemptions, fossil fuels aren't that cost effective.

People are just fearful of change: suppliers, operators, capital loans providers, and so on.

Re:It's not difficult

[LynnwoodRooster]

We've had the capability to do this for quite a while, at least on the military side.

Can you point to a single electric plane that can carry at least 70 people? The Embraer 175 series is really the airplane of choice for short hop/short-haul planes, and it seats 75 to 85, depending upon configuration. What is out there, electric, that does that?

Remember, without massive tax subsidies and tax exemptions, fossil fuels aren't that cost effective.

Oh, so fossil fuels now get tax exemptions, not just tax subsidies? And solar and wind do not? Wind and solar are massively subsidized, especially when you take into account the much lower amount of energy we get from them. Without the much-more massive subsidies for wind and solar, they would be DOA.

People are just fearful of change: suppliers, operators, capital loans providers, and so on.

Some love change simply because they want to "stick it to the man" and want to "change things up" for no reason other than change. Forcing adoption of electric commercial planes - when there isn't a single, viable plane in existence or even planned - is extremely short sighted. But hey - it gets the no-nukes/hate-fossil-fuel crowd all motivated!

Fake news?

[torstein.sivertsen]

I don't know if this has been mentioned here by someone else, but somethings seems off about this news article. As a Norwegian I couldn't help to wonder where this story originated from, as I have seen nothing about this in norwegian newspapers. Slashdot links to the independent, that refers to an article by NRK on norwaytoday.info. This website does in fact not represent NRK. NRK uses their own NRK.no. The rapport from Avinor predicts that electric aircraft should be available from 2030, not that all Norwegian flight use them from 2040. This seems like a bad job by the journalists in siting sources, or just bad journalism.

Wisdom, pay attention!

[Anonymous Coward]

Norway doesn't need domestic flights. She is a long and thin country, much like Japan. Similarly, Norway could be ideally served by one or two longitudinal very high-speed railway mainlines with short branches to serves rural destinations. Furthermore, Norway has a huge amount of hydro-electric power installed on their fjord waterfalls, an essentially free source of electrified railway traction. Considering Norway's rather extreme weather and very long artic winter nights, surface transport by rail is also more reliable and less risky than flying.

The problem is, Norway and neighbouring Sweden use an obsolete form of railway electrification, called fractional frequency supply. This scheme forces them to build a parallel national grid and/or install a lot of frequency-changing substations to provide 50/3 = ~16.7 Hz, 15kV AC electricity for the catenary, thereby excessive huge construction / expansion costs. (Note: a similar obsolete system for electric railway traction existed in small parts of the USA until early 1970s with ~ 11kV / 25Hz AC supply.)

To this day, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Austria and Germany haven't adopted the UIC world standard Kando-system, that is railway traction power taken directly from the national electric grid (50Hz AC in Europe) via simple, low-cost 120/25kV ZBD-type transformers. This germanic-nordic weakness is mercilessly exploited by the powerful air travel lobby, which is also supported by the military-industrial complex (namely EADS-Airbus in Europe) because aviation tech is considered useful for warfare, while railways are no longer appreciated by the general staff.

The above is chief reason why Norway is investing in un-nneded and un-tested electric domestic aviation, even though high-tension electric railways have been a daily reality in service since 1902 and high-speed rail has been mature since 1964.

Re:Wisdom, pay attention!

[dunkelfalke]

And yet Germany has one of the longest and densest railway grids in the world. There are several power plants in Germany that provide electrical power just for the trains, even one nuclear reactor used to be amongst them. It is true that the fractional frequency supply is more expensive, but it is manageable.