ABB and Solar Impulse goes for record breaking flight

Swiss Solar Impulse announced today it will begin its historic flight between late February and early March in Abu Dhabi. ABB is one of the partners. On the plane’s 40,000-kilometer route, pilots Bertrand Piccard and Andre Borschberg will share duties as the aircraft stops in cities including Muscat, Oman; Varanasi and Ahmedabad in India; Chongqing and Nanjing in China; and Phoenix, Arizona in the U.S. It will also stop in Europe or North Africa. Among challenges before the mission concludes in Abu Dhabi in mid-2015 will be a non-stop flight of five days and nights from China to Hawaii. The plane, powered by 17,248 solar cells, will soar higher than Mount Everest each day while fully charging its batteries to stay aloft during the night. Piccard said the addition of ABB, with its leading technologies that enable energy generation from renewable projects as well as boost efficiency, to Solar Impulse’s team have reinforced the endeavor’s ability to demonstrate the power of innovation and clean technology. “This is what the world needs,” said Piccard, the Swiss aviation pioneer who was part of the first team to circle the earth in a balloon in 1999. “Otherwise, we’re going to waste all our natural resources.”