Electric aircraft to protect the environment and reduce aviation infrastructure costs
Need for compact, high-efficiency DC-DC converter solutions
High-voltage bus converters and low-voltage DC-DC converters must be adopted.


Major countries around the world are focusing on growing the markets for pure electric vehicles (EVs) and hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Similar trends are occurring in the aviation industry.

Ampere, headquartered in California, is currently developing an all-electric aircraft. Ampere's ultimate goal is to develop an electric aircraft that, compared to conventional combustion engine-powered aircraft, produces no tailpipe carbon emissions, uses 90% less fuel during takeoff and landing, has 50% less maintenance costs, and produces 66% less noise.

Ampere predicts that if electric aircraft become commercially available, the cost of operating aviation infrastructure will drop, leading to a tenfold increase in the number of airports in the US alone, from 500 to 5,000. This increase in airports will provide residents in remote areas with access to aviation infrastructure. Regional airlines will also have the opportunity to operate more aircraft and offer a wider range of services with the same operating capital.

Ampere, which is in the process of manufacturing an electric aircraft prototype, has already developed a dual power source architecture that allows for redundancy. Currently, we are developing technologies to share power and propulsion loads between fuel and electric power sources based on payload, cruise speed, and flight path.

Ampere has applied an inline parallel hybrid architecture to the Cessna 337 Skymaster. The aircraft features a standard combustion engine-driven propeller at the rear and an electric propeller at the front. During flight, the two propulsion systems can dynamically share power to optimize speed, power, fuel consumption, or noise.

The power supply system for the Cessna 337 Skymaster, which Ampere is modifying, consists of a high-voltage battery pack power supply ranging from 500 to 738 V. Typical flight control and monitoring systems operate on a 28 V supply.

Therefore, Ampere needed a compact, high-efficiency, and thermally-stable DC-DC converter solution that operates from a wide input voltage range and regulates the output to 28 V. Not only that, the high voltage battery required insulation and a maximum power output of 500W.

The Vicor engineering team approached the Ampere design team, who did not want to design and use a circuit board for the power converter, with a two-stage power conversion and regulation solution to optimize efficiency and power density and simplify thermal management.

The Ampere design team was able to isolate and down-convert the high-voltage battery with Vicor's 'High Voltage BCM Bus Converter', and then regulate the bus converter's output to 28V with Vicor's 'Low Voltage DCM DC-DC Converter'.

The prototype aircraft will be tested by Hawaii-based Mokulele Airlines, flying nine to 19 passengers on a 90-mile flight from Honolulu to Kahului.