Sun Aug 30, 2020 6:32 pm
#1793448
Last night, our club took delivery of our Pipistrel Velis: the first EASA type certified electric aircraft. I believe ours was the second one delivered; the first went to Switzerland. Our school's CFI and one of its FI were trained and certified in Italy last week.
The wings will be mounted tonight; they're waiting for our mechanic to be able to participate. In the foreground are three charging stations. We'll keep one at ESGP Gothenburg/Säve and place the others are neighbouring ESGE Borås and ESGA Backamo, both smaller GA airfields. The regional airport ESGT Trollhättan has ordered a charging station, too.
The charge plug looks a lot like that of a car. "Göteborg Energi" is the biggest provider of electricity in Gothenburg. I guess the ad means they sponsor us a little bit, but I don't know how much.
The total battery capacity is 25 kWh, divided into one battery in the front behind the engined and the inverter and one (pictured below) behind the pilot. In a Virus, that's where you place your luggage. No luggage here, but since we can only fly around an hour you don't really have any need for luggage. The pink hose is part of the liquid cooling system for the batteries. That's one of the things that have changed from the initial Alpha Electric which has an air cooling system.
We already have a Pipistrel Virus (the 600 kg version) in the club and around a dozen of us pilots have taken the difference training. We also have two ab initio students flying the Virus. We're told that the actual flight characteristics will be very similar, except the Velis doesn't have the speed brakes that the Virus has.
I thought I'd add posts to this thread as things move along. Our FIs and mechanics will first create training material (based on Pipistrel's, obviously) and routines for charging etc. We don't yet know when we regular PPLs can start training. Feel free to ask questions; I'll answer those I can. For those who want to explain why electric aircraft is a dead end because of the energy density, I believe there are already threads with that topic.
Personally, I'm excited to (soon!) be one of very few GA pilots who've flown electric aircraft. SE-KWH will not replace any of our existing aircraft and its really only useful for circuit work and ~30 minute flights. But it's a start, and somebody has to take the first step. Us having access to the aircraft is very much because of the real estate company Serneke, formerly the owner of ESGP airport, and government grants. Serneke and Göteborg Energi have a solar panel farm just north of the threshold of runway 19, so we can say that we fly on energy collected locally.
/Peter
The wings will be mounted tonight; they're waiting for our mechanic to be able to participate. In the foreground are three charging stations. We'll keep one at ESGP Gothenburg/Säve and place the others are neighbouring ESGE Borås and ESGA Backamo, both smaller GA airfields. The regional airport ESGT Trollhättan has ordered a charging station, too.
The charge plug looks a lot like that of a car. "Göteborg Energi" is the biggest provider of electricity in Gothenburg. I guess the ad means they sponsor us a little bit, but I don't know how much.
The total battery capacity is 25 kWh, divided into one battery in the front behind the engined and the inverter and one (pictured below) behind the pilot. In a Virus, that's where you place your luggage. No luggage here, but since we can only fly around an hour you don't really have any need for luggage. The pink hose is part of the liquid cooling system for the batteries. That's one of the things that have changed from the initial Alpha Electric which has an air cooling system.
We already have a Pipistrel Virus (the 600 kg version) in the club and around a dozen of us pilots have taken the difference training. We also have two ab initio students flying the Virus. We're told that the actual flight characteristics will be very similar, except the Velis doesn't have the speed brakes that the Virus has.
I thought I'd add posts to this thread as things move along. Our FIs and mechanics will first create training material (based on Pipistrel's, obviously) and routines for charging etc. We don't yet know when we regular PPLs can start training. Feel free to ask questions; I'll answer those I can. For those who want to explain why electric aircraft is a dead end because of the energy density, I believe there are already threads with that topic.
Personally, I'm excited to (soon!) be one of very few GA pilots who've flown electric aircraft. SE-KWH will not replace any of our existing aircraft and its really only useful for circuit work and ~30 minute flights. But it's a start, and somebody has to take the first step. Us having access to the aircraft is very much because of the real estate company Serneke, formerly the owner of ESGP airport, and government grants. Serneke and Göteborg Energi have a solar panel farm just north of the threshold of runway 19, so we can say that we fly on energy collected locally.
/Peter
Last edited by akg1486 on Mon Aug 31, 2020 6:05 am, edited 1 time in total.
Autocorrect is so frustrating. It's always making me say things I didn't Nintendo.