Analyzing the impact of battery capacity and charging protocols on the dispatchment of electric towing vehicles at a large airport

Abstract

The aviation industry aims for net-zero emissions by 2050. In this line, achieving climate-neutral ground operations is one of the first objectives. Electric vehicles that tow aircraft during taxiing are a promising technology to achieve climate-neutral ground operations. In this paper, we consider the dispatching of electric towing vehicles at an airport. We study the impact of the maximum battery capacity of these vehicles and the battery recharging protocols, on the total number of electric towing vehicles required at an airport. We propose a mixed-integer linear program to determine the size of the fleet of electric towing vehicles under various battery capacities and various battery recharging protocols. We illustrate our model for one day of operations at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol. The results show that 41, 29, and 24 ETVs are required to tow all aircraft when batteries capacities of 100 kWh, 320 kWh, and 500 kWh are considered, respectively. Compared with the best performing approach existing in literature, our model reduces the required size of the fleet of electric towing vehicles by 27% when considering a nominal battery size of 320 kWh.