Many of the innovative technologies used in Solar Impulse II, the first solar-powered plane to circumnavigate the world, can later be commercialized to address environmental problems, says Maxine Ghavi, group senior vice president and program director for microgrids at ABB, the Swiss power and automation technologies firm.

ABB is the engineering partner for Solar Impulse. Three ABB engineers and ten staff from ABB’s electrical team are embedded in the Solar Impulse team.

The ABB team will take care of improving the ground operations control systems and optimizing the electronic chargers for the airplane's battery systems, amongst other tasks.

“The two organizations have a common vision. We both believe it is important to decouple economic growth with environmental impact, by focusing on energy efficiency and renewable energy,” Ghavi says.

She says that elements of technology such as energy efficiency, energy storage, and efficient conversion from renewable sources to electrical energy, are important technology that can be taken from Solar Impulse for commercialization.

The Solar Impulse II flight will take off from Abu Dhabi on March 9. It will stop en route in various cities, including Muscat in Oman, Varanasi and Ahmedabad in India, Chongqing and Nanjing in China and Phoenix, Arizona. Stopovers are also planned for Europe and North Africa.

Solar Impulse II is expected to set a new record for flying 40,000 kilometers on solar power alone. Twenty engineers and specialists will be monitoring the flight on countless video screens at the Monocle Control Center, which is purpose built for this project.

“Mission Control Center is the guardian angel of Solar Impulse II because we receive all the necessary data to keep the plane in the air and keep pilots happy and healthy,” says Conor Lennon, Mission Control Center communications manager.

Two of the three ABB engineers are part of the electrical and propulsion team at Solar Impulse, helping to extract maximum power yield from the solar panels and making sure the batteries are fully charged.

The third engineer has deployed ABB equipment to improve the reliability of the control system of the mobile hangar that will house the plane if it has to make unscheduled stops. This engineer will be accompanying the Solar Impulse team on its round-the-world journey.