Modeling Energy Infrastructure of Future Electric Urban Air Mobility Operations

Urban Air Mobility (UAM), the operations of novel electric aircraft technologies for transporting passengers and goods in metropolitan areas, has garnered significant interest from industry and academia alike, with over 200 vehicles currently in various stages of development. However, powering a future fleet of UAM vehicles will incur significant increases in electricity demand, exceeding the capabilities of current energy infrastructure. This paper utilizes the Definition, Abstraction, and Implementation (DAI) method, a system-of-systems (SoS) approach, to model future energy demands of a UAM fleet and presents a concept for a UAM dispatch and energy allocation system. Example case studies of UAM operations in Dallas and Chicago are presented, and the energy implications are discussed.