Following its announcement of a range of battery packs last month, Wright Electric shares information about its one-megawatt motor powering an Embraer agricultural airplane. Teaming with Axter Aerospace, a Spanish firm with a history of providing backup electric power for otherwise conventionally powered aircraft; Wright helps make crop dusting a safer enterprise. This eight-year-old video shows Axter’s early efforts with a small Tecnam aircraft. (Note: you might want to turn on the closed captioning.) Low-level flying necessary for dusting or spraying crops requires utter reliability, so a proven turbine backed up by a high-power electric motor seems like an ideal combination for those circumstances. The combined power of 800 kilowatts (1,072 horsepower) allows carriage of a large payload, sufficient power to avoid obstacles, and redundancy to prevent sudden letdowns. The electric motor has been tested to 1.2 kilowatts (1,608 horsepower), so could provide adequate power even if the turbine failed. Failure of either power source is highly unlikely in any …
