Swapping batteries for hydrogen gives drones a whole new range
The helicopter has to go. That is the situation when a tree comes down on a power line in Norway — an expensive, weather-dependent, sometimes dangerous trip for a crew. But a new hydrogen-powered drone built by researchers at SINTEF in Trondheim could replace at least some of those missions, staying aloft for hours on end instead of the minutes a battery-powered drone can manage.
"If you need to find out if a tree has fallen onto a power line, you want to get out there as quickly as possible. Right now, you often have to use a helicopter," said Federico Zenith, a senior research scientist at SINTEF. "A hydrogen drone can be deployed immediately and help restore power more quickly."
The drone — a converted platform fitted with a hydrogen fuel cell and a pressurized hydrogen tank in place of batteries — can fly for several hours, Zenith said, potentially longer than an operator's full workday. That endurance is the whole point. Current battery-powered drones simply cannot cover the distances required to inspect power infrastructure from transformer to transformer. Hydrogen can.
The technology is not new in principle. "It has been several years since the first hydrogen-powered drone flew with Norwegian wings," Zenith said. "But it never evolved into anything more than an experiment." What changed is that fuel cells have become cheap enough to make the economics work. "They are starting to take off," Zenith said — and in a nod to the energy source, he meant it literally.
The current SINTEF drone is, as far as the research team knows, the only hydrogen-powered drone flying in Norway. They believe it is the only one in Scandinavia.
The appeal for utilities and emergency responders is straightforward: a hydrogen drone costs far less to operate than a helicopter, requires less crew risk in bad weather, and can be launched immediately rather than arranged. Beyond power line inspection, the researchers see applications in search and rescue, flood mapping, landslide monitoring, and avalanche assessment — all tasks where range matters more than payload.
The drone's fuel cell is rated for at least a thousand hours of operation and is designed to be swapped out easily. Converting an existing battery drone to hydrogen, Zenith said, was a "quick job" — a point the team is emphasizing as they look for commercial partners.
But the hydrogen drone has a significant limitation: it cannot fly in rain or below freezing temperatures. The fuel cell in its current configuration is not weatherproofed. In Trondheim, that leaves a relatively small window of operational days. The next phase of the project is precisely that: winterproofing the drone so it can handle Norwegian conditions year-round.
SINTEF is now seeking funding and industry partners to take the hydrogen drone from research prototype to a deployable tool. "We weren't looking to replace battery-powered drones," Zenith said. "They are practical for a lot of things. Our goal is to solve the tasks that today's drones can't handle."
For now, the drone sits in a laboratory in Trondheim, waiting for funding, waiting for partners, waiting for a Norwegian winter it can actually fly through.