NREL Partner Testimonial: NASA, Nick Borer (Text Version)

This is the text version of the video NREL Partner Testimonial: NASA, Nick Borer.

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[Throughout the video, footage shows a person talking, aircraft and airports, people working in laboratories, and NREL's campus.]

>>Nick Borer: My name is Nick Borer. I work for NASA at Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.

I'm also principal investigator of what's known as the Airports as Energy Nodes activity.

So, NASA and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory are working on the airports as energy nodes or "ÆNodes" Project.

What we were trying to do is try to prepare airports for the future of air mobility.

We're seeing a lot of new energy carriers for some of these advanced aviation concepts.

They might be powered by battery electric propulsion or use hydrogen or other alternative fuels that aren't available at airports today.

And we're trying to help those airports prepare for that future where they need to start providing that energy to these advanced concepts.

We're partnering with NREL on this because NREL has some great facilities that we need to use to help emulate these energy needs for these airports at full scale.

To be able to access this advanced air mobility, we need to make sure that not only do we have these advanced vehicles, but we have to have the infrastructure in place to service them.

We're really trying to transform how we how aviation can impact our lives—really improve mobility—especially for places that may not have as much access to air travel.

Bringing the different types of energy infrastructure to these airports, really helping these local airports become community energy hubs.

Places like the National Renewable Energy Laboratory has a deep expertise in understanding how to harvest and store and distribute that energy. And that's one of the key components of the Airports as Energy Nodes activity.

When people say we need to do something about infrastructure. And it's really neat to bring all of these people together. Between the airports, the utilities, NREL, NASA ... 

And to really help everybody from the advanced mobility community to the local community that might be flying these airplanes embrace a new mobility future.

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