The introduction of an innovative aircraft on the marker requires innovative propulsion components. The power controller, the electric motor’s inverter, the battery management system, the batteries, the optimized cooling circuit, using liquid for the motor and the inverter and air for the batteries, had to be designed to achieve a reliable aircraft. In absence of digital instruments suitable to control electric aircraft, a custom instrument was also developed including the Human Machine Interface design – i.e. the mean to represent and communicate the electric powertrain status and indicators to pilots encountering an electric aircraft for the first time. The Alpha Electro is also a “software driven aircraft” with throttle by wire – the protocols, the bus architecture, the scheduling, the charging routines developed to control all components required an intense ground and flight testing effort to validate the hardware and the software design. Beside the powertrain, a new recuperation method and a new software tool for designing recuperating propellers were developed to exploit the energy recuperation possibility offered by electric aircraft.
This electric trainer required also a new composite fuselage to be designed. The higher distance from the ground of the electric motor, the new cooling system, the battery boxes positioned one in front and one behind required a redesign of the structures and the development of new molds. Especially the wide apertures needed to enable quick battery replacement required new structural tests and simulations to ensure the certificability of the design.
An extensive work to prepare design data, testing reports, validation data and production quality assurance documentation was carried out to support preparatory certification activities on a global scale, including Australia, Canada, Switzerland and France. In Europe the major effort was dedicated to the European Light Sport Aircraft certification with the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA).
Also new training approaches for this aircraft were developed by preparing an interactive online training course to familiarize students to electric flight and to the systems of this electric aircraft.
The dissemination activities were carried in a wide palette of events, ranging from major airshows (AERO, Oshkosh, Paris Air Show, etc.) to specialized conferences (AIAA, E2Fliegen Symposium, etc) and bilateral meetings with civil aviation authorities for the purpose of preparing certification activities.
The exploitation of the project WATTsUP started with a pre-series of aircraft delivered to selected customers to receive the first market feedbacks, followed by the serial production with the first serially produced aircraft being delivered to Australia. The commercial name selected for the electric trainer is Alpha Electro. Production and sales of the aircraft is the primary exploitation channel of the project WATTsUP, with secondary being design services and electric powertrain components offered to other manufacturers interested to develop electric aircraft.
