Optimizing Electrified Aviation Networks
Strategic Planning Under Spatiotemporal Electricity Price Dynamics
J.J.A. Beckers (TU Delft - Aerospace Engineering)
P. Proesmans – Mentor (TU Delft - Operations & Environment)
More Info
expand_more
Other than for strictly personal use, it is not permitted to download, forward or distribute the text or part of it, without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), unless the work is under an open content license such as Creative Commons.
Abstract
Electric
aircraft (EA) reliance on volatile electricity prices introduces significant financial
risk, a challenge often overlooked in strategic planning. We develop a profit
maximizing Mixed Integer Linear Program (MILP) with a novel circular-route design
to optimize strategic electric airline planning problems, including charge decisions
and mixed fleet composition. Our results show that ignoring electricity prices
can lead to >35% profit losses during volatile periods. While average prices
mitigate this, accurate prices perform best, enabling charging arbitrage such
as ferrying and skipping that boosts profits by 1.1% over simple heuristics. A
mixed fleet of both electric and kerosene aircraft offers additional benefits,
unlocking synergistic profit gains of up to 1.5% while maintaining the
financial stability of a pure kerosene fleet. In such a fleet, kerosene
aircraft form a network backbone, seen by a 10% kerosene fleet share covering
almost 80% of routes. The path to sustainable aviation must therefore
anticipate monthly network changes to remain optimal, incorporate accurate
electricity prices for strategic charging optimization, and leverage mixed
fleets to ease the transition to a more electrified future.