Intelligent Energy, a drone startup, just came up with a hydrogen-powered drone in an attempt to get rid of the Lithium Polymer batteries. The paradigm is shifting and the world is transitioning to more sustainable energy production and drones are also being made to run on sustainable and renewable energy.
The prototype of this drone will be available as soon as 2016, however, bear in mind that this is not the first hydrogen-powered drone. In fact, the first such drone that was capable of flying for about 4 hours was designed earlier by Horizon Energy Systems. So why go with hydrogen as the fuel for drone anyway? The answer lies in the fact that Hydrogen is abundantly available in universe and is quite light despite being immensely powerful. Thus, any energy source that relies on hydrogen will be sustainable for a longer span of time.
Lithium Polymer batteries can be labelled as green energy sources but the cost of manufacturing is quite high. Apart from that, the drones are not able to last as long as you’d expect them to. The most time that these batteries are capable of offering is about 20 minutes or so. If you want a longer flight time, you’d have to increase the battery’s capacity which translates into increasing the size of the battery and that messes the whole design of the drone and you’ll end up compromising on the flight time eventually.
Both the hydrogen cells and the conventional batteries have still a lot of way to go as far as development is concerned along with research and it would sure be an interesting sight to see which one of them proves to be more crucial when it comes to the future of sustainable energy.
