The ITW GSE 7400 – the world’s first fully electric GPU – has been put into daily operation at Eindhoven Airport in the Netherlands – supplying a Transavia Boeing 737-800 with clean power.
The eGPU is a result of the collaboration between Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, Nissan, which provided the battery packs, and ITW GSE, which delivered the solid-state converter and assembled the unit.
Eindhoven Airport provided input on the functional specifications surrounding how to use the GPU in daily operations. This involved months of design work, development and testing, when the 7400 unit was connected to an aircraft and facilitated its first successful turnaround on 2 October.
The eGPU was tested to see how it would cope with various demands; the flight captain was asked to switch on as many instruments as possible and did an APU start-up during the turn-around.
After 65 minutes, the total consumption of the eGPU was only 12.7 kWh.
Staff at the airport were also pleased with the performance of the electric unit, which was clean and silent, compared to the exhaust fumes and the noise level produced by a traditional diesel GPU.
Not only does the ITW GSE 7400 provide the aircraft with power, but also contributes to a cleaner environment, reducing the CO2 production by 90% and the NOx level by as much as 95%, compared to a conventional diesel unit.
