H55 Delivers Certification-Grade Propulsion Battery Modules to Pratt & Whitney Canada, Supporting Demonstration of Hybrid-Electric Aircraft Technology

H55 today announced the deliv­ery of cer­ti­fi­ca­tion-grade propul­sion bat­tery mod­ules to Pratt & Whit­ney Cana­da in sup­port of the RTX Hybrid-Elec­tric Flight Demon­stra­tor.

The mile­stone fur­ther val­i­dates H55’s tran­si­tion from tech­nol­o­gy devel­op­ment to indus­tri­al-scale exe­cu­tion and rep­re­sents an impor­tant step in the com­mer­cial­iza­tion of the company’s cer­ti­fi­ca­tion-grade ener­gy stor­age tech­nolo­gies for hybrid-elec­tric aero­space appli­ca­tions. Pratt & Whit­ney is an RTX busi­ness.

The deliv­ery rep­re­sents more than hard­ware inte­gra­tion. It demon­strates H55’s abil­i­ty to man­u­fac­ture pro­duc­tion-con­form­ing propul­sion sys­tems with­in a reg­u­la­tor-approved envi­ron­ment and deploy them into active air­craft inte­gra­tion and flight-test pro­grams — a capa­bil­i­ty achieved today by only a small num­ber of com­pa­nies glob­al­ly.

As elec­tric and hybrid-elec­tric avi­a­tion moves beyond ear­ly-stage con­cepts toward cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and com­mer­cial­iza­tion, air­craft man­u­fac­tur­ers increas­ing­ly require part­ners capa­ble of deliv­er­ing not only tech­nol­o­gy inno­va­tion, but also indus­tri­al matu­ri­ty, safe­ty archi­tec­ture and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion-ready pro­duc­tion sys­tems.

For H55, the deliv­ery of pro­duc­tion-con­form­ing mod­ules into an active aero­space inte­gra­tion and flight-test pro­gram demon­strates the readi­ness of its tech­nol­o­gy, man­u­fac­tur­ing capa­bil­i­ty and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion frame­work to sup­port future com­mer­cial appli­ca­tions.

Sébastien Demont, H55 Co-Founder and CTO, said: “Air­craft man­u­fac­tur­ers today require more than bat­tery tech­nol­o­gy. They require cer­ti­fi­ca­tion-grade safe­ty archi­tec­ture, indus­tri­al­ized man­u­fac­tur­ing, oper­a­tional reli­a­bil­i­ty and scal­able sys­tems inte­gra­tion.

“Deliv­er­ing pro­duc­tion-con­form­ing mod­ules into the RTX Hybrid-Elec­tric Flight Demon­stra­tor val­i­dates H55’s abil­i­ty to meet those require­ments at an indus­tri­al scale and marks an impor­tant step in bring­ing our cer­ti­fi­ca­tion-grade ener­gy stor­age tech­nolo­gies to a broad­er range of com­mer­cial aero­space appli­ca­tions. This achieve­ment pro­vides a strong foun­da­tion for what comes next across hybrid-elec­tric avi­a­tion, defence, UAVs and next-gen­er­a­tion aero­space plat­forms.” 

H55’s pro­pri­etary bat­tery archi­tec­ture was specif­i­cal­ly devel­oped to meet the demand­ing cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and oper­a­tional require­ments of elec­tric and hybrid-elec­tric propul­sion sys­tems.

The com­pa­ny has accu­mu­lat­ed more than 2,000 flight hours across mul­ti­ple air­craft pro­grams with zero bat­tery-relat­ed inci­dents, cre­at­ing an oper­a­tional dataset and safe­ty record that con­tin­ue to strength­en its com­pet­i­tive posi­tion.

The com­pa­ny also became the first in the indus­try to com­plete reg­u­la­tor-required propul­sion bat­tery cer­ti­fi­ca­tion test­ing — a mile­stone now serv­ing as a foun­da­tion for deliv­er­ies into active aero­space pro­grams.

Jean Thomassin, exec­u­tive direc­tor, New Prod­uct and Ser­vice Intro­duc­tion, Pratt & Whit­ney Cana­da, said: “Hybrid-elec­tric propul­sion rep­re­sents an impor­tant path­way for improv­ing fuel effi­cien­cy and per­for­mance for a wide range of future air­craft plat­forms.

“H55’s abil­i­ty to deliv­er avi­a­tion-grade bat­tery sys­tems with­in a rig­or­ous cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and pro­duc­tion frame­work plays a cru­cial role in demon­strat­ing hybrid-elec­tric tech­nol­o­gy in flight.”  

Fea­tured image: H55 Ada­gio Bat­tery Modules in Pratt & Whit­ney Cana­da Hangar ©RTX

Image above: H55 Ada­gio Bat­tery Mod­ules in Pratt & Whit­ney Cana­da Hangar ©RTX