Collins Aerospace Solidifies an Electrified Future with The Grid

Collins Aerospace has turned its eyes to the future of aircraft propulsion with its unveiling of The Grid ­– an electric power systems lab that will design and test systems for the next generation of electric aircraft in Rockford, Illinois. The $50 million lab is part of a larger $150 million investment Collins Aerospace is making into electric systems over the next three years.

The Grid is designed as a modular lab comprised of four independent, reconfigurable labs that can then be interconnected for testing across The Grid system. The first of these labs is currently under construction in Rockford, aiming to open within 12 months, then the entirety of The Grid is planned to be operational in another two or three years beyond that. It's all a part of Collin Aerospace’s plan to remain ahead of the curve of where the aerospace industry is headed.

“This new 25,000-square-foot lab, what we’re calling The Grid, represents a strategic investment by Collins Aerospace as we position to remain the world leader of aircraft electrification for decades to come,” said Kelly Ortberg, CEO of Collins Aerospace, at The Grid’s unveiling in Rockford on April 4. “The Grid will be the most advanced electric power system lab in the industry, and it will enable us to design and test the next generation of more electric aircraft, including commercial, military, business aviation, unmanned air vehicles, and urban air mobility platforms.”

Ortberg said studies by United Technologies Corporation (UTC) indicate that commercial electric and hybrid-electric propulsion could reduce aircraft noise up to 85 percent; improve fuel consumption by up to 40 percent; reduce carbon dioxide emissions by more than 20 percent; and reduce airline operating and maintenance costs by up to 20 percent. 

“The future of aircraft is electric and by investing in programs like The Grid, Collins is getting ahead of the industry and redefining aerospace,” continued Ortberg. 

The Grid will be used to help design and test a 1 megawatt (MW) – equal to the power consumption of 400 average U.S. homes – motor, motor controller and battery system. The 1 MW motor will be the aerospace industry’s most power dense and efficient to date, and The Grid will be one of a select few facilities in the world with the capability to test complete electric propulsion systems of such capacity, 

“It’s a tool that focuses on innovation,” said Tim White, Collins Aerospace’s president of power and controls of The Grid. “We’re going to be developing high voltage DC systems, multi-megawatt generators, and multi-megawatt motor controls, but just as important, if we think about the industry that we’re in, it’s developing these systems and developing the control and protection scheme, so we can safely certify these systems, make sure they operate in every environment and every failure mode. That’s really the power we have. Multiple megawatt class generators and motors and the ability to handle that power is what the intent of The Grid is.” 

The first project being utilized by The Grid is a venture with United Technologies Advanced Projects (UTAP), a startup-type group within UTC, named Project 804 with a mission to “define what hybrid means for aerospace.”

Project 804 will construct and fly a demonstrator hybrid-electric plane by 2022.

The demonstrator plane, based on a Bombardier Dash 8 aircraft, will be “re-engined” with a 2 MW propulsion system on one side, consisting of an engine augmented by a battery-powered electric motor according to a UTC whitepaper, authored by Jean Thomassin and Greg Winn, on the electric-hybrid plane. 

Project 804 will save 30 percent on fuel costs, along with reductions in emissions and noise, said Winn during The Grid's unveiling. 

The Grid will be utilized to test and analyze the multiple megawatts of power required of Project 804’s hybrid-electric plane and, eventually, full electric aircraft.

“Another key capability of The Grid is significant instrumentation able to collect and analyze terabytes of data when they test and analyze the systems. Before any of these systems make their way onto an aircraft, we’ve measured and understood essentially everything about what is happening in the micro-grid of the aircraft themselves,” elaborated White.

One of the key priorities of both Project 804 and The Grid is to begin working out the challenges that electric aircraft pose; challenges such as designing higher voltage systems than the standard 120 to 270 voltage systems found on aircraft today and prevent short-circuiting at high altitudes, increasing the power density of components while decreasing weight, and dealing with the heat produced by those components.

“We’ll be using the lab to test, whether they’re generators or motors or high-powered electronics, that today are at a certain power level of kilowatts per kilograms… we’ll be doubling, tripling the power density for those systems and verifying their performance against all the requirements we establish,” White said. 

“This isn’t a project that we fly and then sell,” said Mauro Atalla, who leads the worldwide engineering and technology function at Collins Aerospace, of Project 804. “It will give us the understanding of some of the system level integration challenges that we would face when an OEM decides to build a hybrid-electric aircraft, so we will have that knowledge ahead of time. The demonstrator will give us all the understanding of what it takes to do it by 2022. We want to be ahead of everybody and understand what it takes.”