This video explores the potential of solar power to keep a fixed-wing drone aloft. ProjectAir's team conducts bench testing with a simple plane design, using efficient solar cells and a modest battery system.
For the most part, we treat electric aviation like it’s something that we’ll see in the future. I mean, batteries are expensive and heavy, and they don’t hold that much energy per unit of weight. So, compared to, say, kerosene , batteries take up a lot more space and weight capacity in a plane design. This means either really poor range or carrying around nothing but batteries .
Large, well-funded entities like NASA have experimented with solar aircraft in the past that can fly indefinitely, but the technology is starting to reach low enough costs where DIY experimenters can have a go at it. At this point, the plan was to build a larger, more efficient airframe with more solar and some battery to prevent power loss during banking, passing clouds, and more. This approach worked well on the bench, so they added the cells to a flying wing plane design that could fit 60 solar cells! Sadly, the plane didn’t initially glide well, but moving the battery forward led to better gravity and then better gliding.
But, despite the clouds, they were able to determine that the solar cells were making the battery deplete at a lower rate than it did on the bench with no help from solar, so it was definitely helping. But, after what appeared to be a successful test flight, the motor started losing power and the team lost control of the plane.
Solar Power Drone Aviation Experiment Renewable Energy
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