EH2Air: Electricity and Hydrogen towards Green Air Transport

Project Summary

This EH2Air project will address airport charging/refuelling infrastructure challenges by developing grid-connected microgrid solutions in future airports, aiming to maximize on-site hydrogen/electricity generation and storage capabilities to reduce the reliance on grid electricity during peak time, thus cutting operational costs and overall carbon footprint. The microgrid system’s flexibility also enables it to respond to dynamic electricity pricing, efficiently utilizing surplus solar PV energy, low-price grid electricity for battery charging or hydrogen production via electrolysis. This not only enhances the airport affordability by reducing operational costs but also provides flexibility and frequency response to the power grid, generating additional revenue.

Project Achievements

Airport energy demand forecasting: develop computationally efficient surrogate models for diverse propulsion technologies to estimate mission-specific aircraft energy demand, integrate with flight schedules to forecast overall airport energy demand. Integrated energy system: design as grid-connected microgrid featuring energy storage, on-site renewable generation, energy coupling devices for bi-directional energy transactions between electricity and hydrogen. Capacity planning and operational strategies: optimal installed capacity and scheduling strategy is identified by minimising lifecycle cost. Real-time commitment and dispatch is developed to minimise operational costs with supply-demand balance.

Conclusions

The EH2Air project successfully deliver net zero airport energy infrastructure planning and operation platform, from energy demand forecasting, integrated electricity-hydrogen energy systems, lifecycle cost analysis-based capacity planning, and real-time commitment and dispatch strategies to support a cost-effective transition to sustainable aviation. A key insight is the need for flexible, adaptable infrastructure capacity expansion planning to accommodate the transition from early-stage battery-electric or hybrid-electric to fully decarbonised hydrogen-powered aircraft, ensuring long-term infrastructure economic viability as technology evolves. The project research outcomes can support a cost-effective transition to make sustainable aviation more affordable and accessible for all users.

Next Steps

We will leverage digital twins to enhance airport energy infrastructure operations and capture real-time data streaming from realistic airport flight operations, enabling more accurate real-time estimation of charging and refuelling energy demands; secondly, we will monitor the operational status of energy infrastructure to facilitate real-time energy management, control, and health monitoring. By using the developed platform as a virtual control centre, we will effectively coordinate aviation operations with energy system management, optimise flight scheduling and energy usage, and maximise efficiency across the airport ecosystem. We also plan to collaborate with airport operators to conduct pilot studies at selected airports, validating capacity planning in practical scenarios and ensuring scalability across different airport types. Since electric and hydrogen-powered aircraft are not yet operational, initial pilot studies will focus on decarbonising ground operations, validating the infrastructure’s performance while preparing for future aircraft propulsion technologies.