Solar Altitude Record and Tour de France

Dean Sigler Announcements, Batteries, Electric Aircraft Materials, Solar Power, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

Une Homme of Accomplishment Jean Baptiste Loiselet is an accomplished person,  setting a recent ultralight solar altitude record in his own ultralight sailplane. That is only one of his many exploits.  He has been part of a small crew on the remote Kerguelen Islands, between the southern tip of Africa and Australia, and north of Antarctica.  With supply ships only four times a year, Jean Baptiste had to be well organized and resourceful to maintain the equipment necessary for life at the IPEV (French Polar Institute Paul-Émile Victor).  His work with Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs) required full responsibility for everything from preparing requests for equipment, recruiting a team, and purchasing the needed equipment including ROVs.  Administratively, he wrote operational procedures, managed the site and and remote operations, and created reports and oversaw invoicing.  These became important elements in crafting his own solar aircraft. Beyond his duties on Antarctic expeditions, he works with young people as part of The AJD – …

Gogoro Goes Solid State

Dean Sigler Announcements, Batteries, Sustainable Aviation 1 Comment

Gogoro, a Taiwan-based scooter and battery system, has added solid state chemistry to its swappable batteries.  This increases the stored energy in each 9 kilogram (19.8 pound) pack from 1.7 kilowatt-hours of the current liquid electrolyte to 2.5 kWhr.  These packs are light enough for a small woman to handle, as shown in Gogoro’s promotional videos. Growing GoStations Swapping batteries on Gogoro’s own scooters is quick and convenient, with over “10,000 battery-swapping GoStations at over 2,300 locations,” by the firm’s own count.  They serve over 450,000 riders with over 340,000 daily swaps.  Powering 95-percent of all electric two-wheel scooters on the island nation, they’ve “hosted” more than 260,000,000 total battery swaps to date.  Gogoro boasts their “Network subscribers have swapped over 140 million Smart Batteries without incident since 2015.” The number of GoStations is close to exceeding the number of gas stations on Taiwan. A joint development between Gogoro and Prologium, the new solid-state batteries fit the existing modules in …

Tehachapi Soars with New ideas – Day 2

Dean Sigler Biomimicry, Electric Powerplants, Solar Power, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

The annual Experimental Soaring Association Western Workshop spills over the Labor Day weekend, starting with a welcome barbecue/potluck Friday evening and an official kickoff on Saturday.  Sunday features more technical presentations and this year – an organization business meeting and a closing talk about moon shots. Pelicans, Albatross and Perpetual Flight Phillip Barnes, an accomplished aerodynamicist, photographer and expert on soaring birds, links all his interests and skills in his web site, How Flies the Albatross. This year, he brought his knowledge to bear on a design for a flying machine that would pull energy from the air it flies through to power its electric motors – Coulomb Keeper. He described the design process behind it in a talk titled, “Aircraft Energy Gain from an Atmosphere in Motion.” Keeper is an outgrowth of Phil’s earlier aircraft concept, Faraday.  Both are derived from his desire to fly like the Albatross, which manages to circumnavigate the Antarctic Circle in seemingly perpetual flight.  …