Solar Impulse 2, the airplane that only relied on solar power to fly through a pioneering trip around the world, is finally taking flight again. Sometime next week, the featherweight aircraft will take off from Oahu’s Kalaeloa Airport, bound for North America.
On the ground, ABB, a major company in power and microgrid technologies, is helping remote communities and islands like Hawaii to meet and sustain their own energy needs by incorporating renewable and clean energy technologies into the power grid.
"One of our goals for this historic round-the-world journey and for our technology partnership with Solar Impulse is to demonstrate that you can separate economic growth from environmental impact with help from smarter and more sustainable technologies," said Greg Scheu, president, Americas region, ABB. "Renewable energy, microgrids, battery storage, higher efficiency standards -- these all show that we can power the world without consuming the earth."
"What we have on Solar Impulse is a system that captures its own energy, converts it into electricity, and stores it and manages its consumption in a sustainable way," said Solar Impulse pilot and CEO, André Borschberg. "This is exactly what ABB is doing on the ground with its distributed energy resources or microgrids."
"If Solar Impulse can fly day and night around the world with no fossil fuel, it demonstrates that these technologies are now mature and ready for the market so everyone can use them," said Solar Impulse pilot and chairman, Bertrand Piccard. "ABB gives credibility to what we are doing, because it is doing it on the ground."
Source: prnewswire
Photo Credit: solarimpulse