Jean-Baptiste Loiselet is a disruptive force seemingly immune to conventional thinking. Funding what he calls a “hybrid” aircraft from his life savings, he has flown his solar sailplane around France, set a world altitude record for electric microlight aircraft, demonstrated its airworthiness at the 2024 Paris Air Show, and recently won his third Electrifly-in award at Bern, Switzerland.
For three years in a row, Jean-Baptiste has won the Electrifly-in tropfy in his class – Hybrid
Sharing the Knowledge
Jean-Baptiste and Raphael Domjan have become sponsors for a student project involving “solarizing” a vintage Schleicher KA-8 sailplane. The students recently acquired a second KA-8 to be used as a ground flight similator.
IPS’SOLAIRE project personnel display their KA-8 sailplane
Breaking It Down
According to the school’s LinkedIn site, “Founded over 60 years ago, IPSA (L’École d’ingénieurs en aéronautique et spatial, or school for aeronautical and space engineers) is an aeronautical and space engineering school. Based in Paris, Toulouse, and Lyon, IPSA offers several programs…” One such program, organized and operated by a group of about 30 students, is IPS’Solaire, ready to add solar power to their aeronautical explorations; an academic and practical form of disruptive soaring.
Jean-Baptiste has shown that even a small, 13-meter (42.6 feet) wing can carry enough solar cells to enable self-powered takeoffs and long-term soarning, augmentins motor power with thermals and ridge lift. Raphael’s airplane uses commercial solar cells, which24-percent efficient. The cost of providing this alternative power to aircraft such as sailplanes might encourage powering vintage birds with the 25-kilowatt size motor the IPS’SOLAIRE will eventually be fitted with. Anne Lavrand did something similar over a decade ago, with a brushed motor, no less, on a vintage standard class (15-meter or 49-feet span) sailplane. She didn’t have the advantage of economical solar cells to help extend flights. Today, her e-Props power ultralights, paramotors, small aircraft, and drones and have sold over 300,000 blades.
Imagine the possibilites of powering older sailplanes and adding solar cells to their wings. It’s a demonstrated technology that seems to on the verge of being widely discovered. Let’s hope the young engineers at IPS can help bring this forward. With sponsorship from Jean-Baptiste Loiselet and Raphael Domjan, they may yet be part of a new and disruptive wave.
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Jean-Baptiste explains what he has been able to accomplish with his S0l Ex. “An average sunny day easily provides one to three takeoffs, and the battery allows for 60 kilometers of engine operation. For the 2022 Tour de France, the pilot flew three to five hours a day, knowing that “in a pure glider, as long as it’s daylight and there’s wind, the flight is unlimited.”
He uses 20 to 50-percent of the battery at takeoff, leaving enough stored energy for safe flight, with in-flight charging adding to its duration. Jean Baptiste says, “It’s a sensitive step for the battery,” His use and charging protocols allow him to land “with a battery charged to around 70-percent.”
Jean-Baptiste used bare solar cells from SunPower Maxeon integrated the cells into the wings of the craft, as shown in this YouTube video. Pardon our French.
He ahieves 1 kilowatt-hour per meter per day of real energy harvested. With 5.8 square meters of solar cells installed, the aircraft’s Li-Po (lithium polymer) battery (4.3 kWh) can be fully charged, from 0 to 100-percent in four hours.
“🌱 Hybrid because the Sol.Ex. is a bit of a solar-electric plane and a bit of a glider.
“🌱 Hybrid because it is the only aircraft that is really designed to operate on a mix of energy: sun to take off and wind, lifts to move forward.
“🌱 Hybrid because with this machine I explore new flight strategies where you have to mix short phases of powered flight with phases of pure gliding.
“But why am I still alone in my category after 3 years? 2 options in my opinion:
“🤔 What I do is only of interest to an extremely small number of people (me alone).
“or
“🚀 We are facing a disruptive innovation. Like most disruptive innovations, it takes time to see and understand what it brings.
“We have seen disruptive innovations that have changed the world… I don’t know if that will be the case here, but I like to think that this possibility exists.”
This disruption is a point of merit in America’s high-tech world, and includes the idea of displacing older technologies. Electric cars, for instance, are displacing earliers fossil-fuel burners. Drivability and economics are pushing this new approach, despite widespread reluctance to give up outmoded ways.
Disruptive technology sometimes has a hard time overcoming existing infrastructures. Up to now, there have been far more gas pumps than electric charging stations. That is changing. Los Angeles County now has over 8,600 charging stations compared to its 2,704 gas stations (2024 data). We have passed “Peak Oil,” and the supply, at least in this country, is diminishing overall. Oil itself will always find uses, including keeping the mechanical parts on even electrical vehicles lubricated. Changes will occur here, too, with synthetics moving in on the territory.