Operation Laser Kiwi: help us take New Zealand-made energy on the road
It's normally very difficult to fuel up when you're flying, but the aircraft developed by Christchurch company Kea Aerospace makes it look easy because it relies on the big nuclear fusion reactor in the sky.
Kea Aerospace opened its new facility in Christchurch last week. The 3,000sqm space is designed to house a new unmanned aircraft called the Atmos Mk 2, which has a 35m wingspan. That is bigger than an Airbus A320. It will also be mission control for any launches.
Kea Aerospace's first plane, the Mk I, had a 12.5m wingspan and weighed just 40kg. That project kicked off in 2021 and CEO Mark Rocket says it was designed to fly from dawn till dusk in the stratosphere.
The Mk II is all about flying continuously, for weeks or months at a time, he says, and that's down to a combination of solar, very light materials, energy efficiency and new battery technology.
CTO Philipp Sueltrop says it uses about as much energy as a hairdryer when it's flying and, unlike some other space-focused companies, even the launches are electric, with an Audi e-Tron helping the planes to take off.
Kea Aerospace is in the aerial photography and surveillance game and New Zealand has a lot of space to monitor. Sueltrop says Australia and New Zealand are responsible for 21% of the world's water surface. There's illegal fishing, smuggling and real defence issues to deal with.
Satellites can't do it all to the fullest, and neither can manned planes, he says. That's the gap it's aiming to fill and, as solar efficiency and battery technology improves, there's an opportunity to fly further.
While aviation is one of the sectors where electric options don't yet exist or are uneconomic (unlike 84% of New Zealand's ten million fossil machines), Rocket says there is a lot of potential with short-haul electric flights and US company BETA recently tested one of its electric planes for Air New Zealand.
"There are use cases where this works, and there will be more use cases where you can integrate fully electric, maybe solar-powered aviation," says Sueltrop.
Australia reaches a milestone in August, with more new electric cars sold than petrol cars; another new study shows EV batteries last longer than the myths have made out; Heart Aerospace sends the world's heaviest electric plane skywards; China's massive mining machine hits the dirt; and we've fully embraced heat pumps to warm the air, now they're coming for our water.
Read moreDownloadNew Zealand spends about as much on petrol and diesel as it earns exporting concentrated milk. Mike Casey says that money leaves the country, and most of it does not have to. He runs a cherry orchard in Central Otago on 21 electric machines, and a $50,000 diesel bill became a $25,000 revenue stream before financing costs. What I Asked Mike👉 How much money does New Zealand lose every year buying fuel from offshore?👉 What did it actually cost to electrify 21 machines?👉 What is the real payback period, machine by machine?👉 What can you do if you lease your building and cannot touch the roof?👉 Who should not do this?
Read moreDownloadA pinch and a punch (and a big bunch of new EVs) for the first of the month. The Rewiring gang is always pretty jazzed about the release of the new car sales numbers each month and, while the short-term stats tend to bounce around a bit, the long-term trend is clear: sales of new EVs are up by 150% year to date and sales of new petrol vehicles are down by 15% in the same period.
Read moreDownload
