Report
Teaser, summary, work performed and final results
Periodic Reporting for period 1 - SUNSET (Storage energy UNit for Smart and Efficient operation on Tarmac)
Teaser
The European project SUNSET (Storage energy UNit for Smart Efficient operation on Tarmac) is part of the aeronautical research program Clean Sky II, which supports projects whose objective is to develop advanced technologies to increase the environmental performance of the air...
Summary
The European project SUNSET (Storage energy UNit for Smart Efficient operation on Tarmac) is part of the aeronautical research program Clean Sky II, which supports projects whose objective is to develop advanced technologies to increase the environmental performance of the air transport to reduce emissions CO2, particulate emissions, noise, and gain in technical performance. CleanSky II aims industrialization innovative technologies from 2025. Cleansky is part of the program European Commission for Research and Innovation Horizon 2020.
SUNSET follows the SOG PEERS project (Smart Operation on Ground System- Power Electronics with Energy Recycling System - Clean Sky I). The latter was intended to demonstrate the feasibility of the motorization of electric landing gear for aircraft short/medium-haul aircraft European manufacturers. Following the results obtained end of 2015, research on taxing electrical device allowing movement ground of the plane from the supplied energy by the auxiliary power unit (APU) have been restarted in the CleanSky II program. The electrical system makes it possible to manage quick two-way exchanges on the high voltage DC bus during the taxing phases -before take-off and after landing- be the phase where the aircraft rolls on the ground. As part of the development of the Electric Taxiing for landing systems which allows the aircraft to push-back and taxi under on board generated electrical power without the main engines running, SUNSET’s main goal is to develop a demonstrator of a new generation of high-density energy module and bidirectional converter for theses on-ground operations.
Work performed
From the beginning of the project in March 2018 until May 2019, the project is online with the initial planning and milestones.
The first phase of the project was dedicated to the writing of the technical specification which considers the use cases of the final application (duty cycles/electrical & mechanical interfaces/environmental contraints….).
From the technical data of this specification, several technical trades-off have been realized to choose the power semiconductors technology, the power conversion topology and select the cells for energy storage.
- The technology of power semiconductors is a current new SiC MOSFET components that allows high voltage and high frequency operation with lower electrical losses. This technology offers the best solution for high power density design.
- The selected electrical energy storage cell offers one of the best energy density kWh/kg and kWh/L. The battery cells offer the best compromise between high embedded energy storage capacity and electrical power capacity.
The results of those trades-off have been used to study a first architecture with a preliminary design of the SUNSET equipment.
The current development of the SUNSET equipment is at the end of detailed design phase and the first electronic PCBs for the prototype are under manufacturing.
Final results
Not applicable at the stage of the project.