Rolls-Royce Deutschland to lead EU hybrid-electric engine project

Rolls-Royce Deutschland will lead a pan-European project to demonstrate a hybrid-electric gas turbine for aviation. The project is called Elevated and falls under the EU's Clean Aviation programme.

The consortium plans to build a hybrid-electric subsystem, install it in a jet engine and test it under realistic boundary conditions. It is targeting a 20% reduction in emissions.

According to Rolls-Royce, the work will feed into development of its UltraFan 30 demonstrator as that effort moves towards Technology Readiness Level 6. Alan Newby, the company's Research & Technology director, said integrating and demonstrating a hybrid-electric system in realistic conditions would produce data to validate modelling and inform technology selection, product development, certification planning and industrialisation.

Newby said Elevated would sit alongside turbomachinery work already under way through a separate effort called Unified. Together, he said, they would bring together the technology paths needed to validate future UltraFan capability. He listed thrust, fuel burn, noise, emissions and durability as the performance areas the work is meant to support.

The Elevated consortium includes industry, academic and research organisations from France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain and the UK, alongside Rolls-Royce Deutschland. Their combined capabilities cover hybridisation, electrification, engine integration, electrical machines and drives, powerplant integration, high-voltage harnesses, aircraft integration and modelling.