Enabling Battery-Powered Commercial Aviation: Developing a System Architecture for a Multi-Mw Charging System

In an effort to reduce the environmental impact of commercial aviation, there have been numerous battery-powered electric aircraft (BPEA) under development. Small aircraft are currently in operation, yet regional, narrow-or wide-body aircraft require at least 10 years before expected entry into service. This extended timeframe reflects not only the complexity of developing the aircraft themselves, but also the need to establish the necessary supporting systems and infrastructure required for their successful integration. Charging infrastructure at airports is one of the key supporting technologies for this development. Hence, this paper focuses on the development of a system architecture for a multi-MW charging system for large-scale BPEA. Charging systems up to multi-kW and single-MW have been developed for various types of electric mobility, and their scalability to multiMW systems is investigated. We combine this upscaling approach with a top-down approach, starting from the operational charging requirements of a regional 90-seater BPEA under development to scale our architecture. Our proposed architecture was validated using a conceptual design and component selection, ensuring its feasibility. This also validates the scalability of currently existing charging system architectures for use in aviation.