51–60 of 71 posts
Makes you wonder how they even manage to power those 500 Watt aircraft headlight bulbs, tens of KW in avionics, coffee machines and kettles, ovens, in-flight entertainment system per every seat etc etc
Because a) they know at the time the plane is designed the exact power draw of all those bits of kit and b) said bits of kit can be designed from the ground up to play nicely with aircraft power supplies.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because a) they know at the time the plane is designed the exact power draw of all those bits of kit and b) said bits of kit can be designed from the ground up to play nicely with aircraft power supplies.
Boeing 747 was designed in 1960s.
Most people would really only want a few hours of charging. Then you could have a capped number of active sockets per flight of say 50-100 seats.
Every pacific crossing I've been on in the last three years (all 747s) has had AC to my seat. As far as I could tell all the seats had it. Large jets have auxiliary engines that power the coffee makers, the ovens they use for cooking in the plane, the lights, etc. You can normally see the exhaust for this engine on the very tip of the tail. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe this article is defeate…
"I wondered whether, as a technical matter, an airliner could actually produce enough power to keep a planeful of laptop users plugged in through a whole flight. [...] Short answer: No, you probably couldn't make this work." Given that the power output of the engines of a Boeing 747 is 140MW [1], enough to power 15 copies of the Empire State Building at peak business hours[2], I find this impossibility a bit depressi…
The APU power is more relevant. THe 737 can have 90kW APU which should be enough for 1000 laptops under full load (while 737 cannot carry more than 215 passangers) http://www.b737.org.uk/apu.htm
For those advocating for a low-voltage DC power source, look at Empower--it's installed on more than 40 airlines. 15V DC, 75W.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EmPower_%28aircraft_power_adapt...
Nobody needs 120v AC -- everyone on a plane is stepping it down and converting it to dc! The solution here isn't 120vac to every seat -- it's coming up with a new DC standard that plugs directly to our devices. The hard work of an airplane based inverter is undone by our power bricks, and energy is lost to heat in both. Lots of industry cooperation needed for this to happen, though.
Nobody needs 120v AC -- everyone on a plane is stepping it down and converting it to dc! The solution here isn't 120vac to every seat -- it's coming up with a new DC standard that plugs directly to our devices. The hard work of an airplane based inverter is undone by our power bricks, and energy is lost to heat in both. Lots of industry cooperation needed for this to happen, though.
That industry standard DC supply is 5V from the USB port. Stick a USB port in the arm of each seat and sell an adapter kit for common laptops and phones on-board. Although i'm not sure a USB port will supply enough current for a laptop.
Every pacific crossing I've been on in the last three years (all 747s) has had AC to my seat. As far as I could tell all the seats had it. Large jets have auxiliary engines that power the coffee makers, the ovens they use for cooking in the plane, the lights, etc. You can normally see the exhaust for this engine on the very tip of the tail. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe this article is defeate…