The H2D55 is the first in Heven’s product line of hydrogen-powered drones, tailored to a wide range of commercial and defence use-cases, from reforestation projects to emergency response, last mile delivery and longer intel-gathering missions.
The drone, offering five times greater energy efficiency than traditional lithium battery-powered drones, is capable of flying for 100 minutes with a payload capacity of 7kg.
The H2D55 is the first in a planned line-up of three hydrogen fuelled drones that will be released over the next nine months, with the additional models having increased payload capacity while preserving the longer flight endurance.
Bentzion Levinson
Speaking to H2 View in an exclusive interview, Bentzion Levinson, CEO and founder of HevenDrones, and revealed this is the company’s first hydrogen-powered drone, saying, “Hydrogen is a game-changer in drone innovation generally, and specifically in our case we are getting about five times the amount of flight endurance.
“We can now do 10 deliveries back and forth without refuelling, which is significant. If you look at the pricing of this and the total cost of ownership, hydrogen is cheaper than batteries. We’re talking about two or three minutes of recharging for hydrogen.
“Once drones will be able to fly for hours and lift significant payloads, then we’ll start seeing drones take a more significant role in our day to day lives, because they’ll be more usable.”
The launch of HevenDrones’ hydrogen product line addresses the challenge of flight endurance and payload capacity associated with lithium battery-powered drones, as well as the long-term environmental impact linked to lithium mining.
©HevenDrones
Without the need to frequently replace batteries, hydrogen fuel cells will also lower long-term ownership costs for organisations implementing drone technology at scale.
Levinson added, “If you think about the potential of drones there’s a really empty space. There are so many industries that will have significant value added by drones. Our markets are homeland security markets and industrial markets.
“So initial work has been in the homeland security space, and there are many use cases there from logistics and that includes simulators, emergency services like firefighting, and also go into additional industries.”
“The next step will be ship to shore, solar panels, construction sites, agriculture, where there’s no constraint regulatory wise.
“Green hydrogen, which is what we all want, has to come from a renewable energy source and for that to work we have to have a renewable source and hydrogen and solar is a big part of that. Drones are being used in solar farms to identify inefficiencies or if the panels are dirty. They’re also used for security, those are the main use cases.
“We’re going to be launching an autonomous solar wind farm, which means the drones are the ones lifting up the solar panels, replacing them and putting them on. There are many use cases that we can add value to today.
“And then further down the road you going to look at your window and see 10s of drones flying, doing everything from last month delivery to medical.”
Levinson claimed the additional drones released throughout the year will exceed the 30kg of net payload, within less than a 90-minute flight path.
He said, “There’ll be multiple different models. So essentially, it’s the combination of getting 30kg slash 70lbs of payload flying for 90 minutes. More details are to come.”
In 2021, HevenDrones announced a new partnership with Plug Power, following the signing of a bi-lateral alliance to develop fuel cell stack technology and systems capabilities to power and refuel HevenDrones’ next-generation drone fleet.
Read more: New partnership to focus on hydrogen-powered heavy-lift actionable drones
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