AFWERX Agility Prime Program Demonstrates Mobile Battery Charging Station for eVTOL aircraft

The AFWERX Agili­ty Prime Pro­gram, launched by the U.S Air Force in April 2020, is part­ner­ing with the eVTOL indus­try to devel­op a new class of air mobil­i­ty sys­tems. One of the major chal­lenges faced is the bat­tery tech­nol­o­gy and man­age­ment. To address this, the Pro­gram recent­ly received a demon­stra­tion of a mobile bat­tery care sta­tion (Decem­ber 15th, 2023) devel­oped by Arctech Charge, an Utah-based com­pa­ny.

The sta­tion, specif­i­cal­ly designed to sup­port eVTOL air­craft test­ing and oper­a­tions, can pro­vide fast and safe charg­ing for up to 36 bat­ter­ies at a time. The sys­tem is cli­mate con­trolled and can offer two bat­tery care pro­files:- 

: One for extend­ing bat­tery life cycles.

: One for charg­ing as quick­ly and safe­ly as pos­si­ble.

Man­ti Glea­son, the co-Founder and CEO of Arctech Charge, com­ment­ed, “We can either pri­ori­tise faster bat­tery turnover or focus on longevi­ty for our bat­tery fleet. The bat­tery care pro­files use dynam­ic charg­ing to opti­mise its charge con­di­tion, ensur­ing that it meets mis­sion oper­a­tional needs while also extend­ing its lifes­pan.” 

The com­pa­ny focused on “mobil­i­ty and safe­ty” when devel­op­ing the bat­tery charg­ing sta­tion, which is some­thing the Agili­ty Prime Pro­gram man­agers insist­ed on with the project.

Man­ti Glea­son (Cred­it: Arctech Charge)

Pro­vid­ing opti­mal care for each bat­tery will reduce the need for fre­quent bat­tery replace­ments, which has the poten­tial to save time and mon­ey for end users. The release explains, “Addi­tion­al­ly, the two bat­tery care pro­files will allow users to choose the best bat­tery care option based on their spe­cif­ic needs, which will help test and oper­ate eVTOL air­craft more effi­cient­ly and effec­tive­ly.”

An impressed Pat Can­de­lar­ia, an Agili­ty Prime Pro­gram Man­ag­er, com­ment­ed, “This is a great exam­ple of how the Air Force is col­lab­o­rat­ing with the indus­tri­al base and the small busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty to fos­ter inno­va­tion and accel­er­ate the devel­op­ment of trans­for­ma­tive ver­ti­cal lift capa­bil­i­ties. We are excit­ed to see the poten­tial appli­ca­tions of eVTOL air­craft for both mil­i­tary and civil­ian mis­sions, and we look for­ward to con­tin­u­ing our part­ner­ship with this com­mu­ni­ty in the future.”

The Pro­gram col­lab­o­rates with the small busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty through the Depart­ment of the Air Force Small Busi­ness Inno­va­tion Research and Small Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Tran­si­tion schemes to advance the eVTOL indus­try.

Last Sep­tem­ber, AFWERX and BETA Tech­nolo­gies broke ground on the first elec­tric air­craft charg­ing sta­tion on a mil­i­tary instal­la­tion at Duke Field, Flori­da. A month lat­er AFWERX offi­cials and local media wit­nessed one of the qui­etest Air Force air­craft fly­overs ever, when BETA’s ALIA elec­tric air­craft made sev­er­al low pass­es over the air­field at Flordia’s Eglin AFB.

Can­de­lar­ia said the Air Force’s inter­est in eVTOL air­craft “has sev­er­al appli­ca­tions includ­ing med­ical evac­u­a­tion, fire­fight­ing, civ­il and mil­i­tary dis­as­ter relief, search and res­cue, and human­i­tar­i­an relief.”

He also men­tioned oth­er ben­e­fits such as zero-emis­sion avi­a­tion, qui­et noise pro­files and even­tu­al­ly cost sav­ings to oper­ate and main­tain its fleet with­out depen­den­cy on tra­di­tion­al fos­sil fuels.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://afwerx.com/divisions/prime/agility-prime/

https://arctechcharge.com

(Top image: The Arctech Charge bat­tery charg­ing, main­te­nance, and man­age­ment sys­tem can be tai­lored to fit any bat­tery. The self-con­tained mobile unit was built to sup­port eVTOL air­craft devel­op­ment for the Air Force’s Agili­ty Prime Pro­gram. (USAF pho­to by R. Nial Brad­shaw))