Airport operator Fraport is gradually converting its fleet of vehicles to electric drives. Parallel to this, the charging infrastructure at Germany’s largest air traffic hub is also expanding and evolving.
It now still works conventionally, with current flowing from a charging point into vehicles’ storage batteries. In the future, however, power will also be supplied in the opposite direction. This approach will turn e-vehicles into mobile storage units that are able to feed unused power back into the grid on an as-needed basis. The technology isn’t yet ready for large-scale use, however, and the interfaces also still need to be standardized. This applies in particular to many of the special-purpose vehicles used for aircraft ground handling.