H55 Delivers Battery Modules for RTX Hybrid-Electric Demonstrator

Swiss battery manufacturer H55 delivered its certification-grade Adagio Battery Modules to Pratt & Whitney Canada on June 9, 2026, marking a critical hardware transition for the RTX Hybrid-Electric Flight Demonstrator program.

The delivery, announced in an H55 press release, transitions the 200 kilowatt-hour (kWh) energy storage system from technology development to active aircraft integration. The demonstrator is based on a modified De Havilland Aircraft of Canada Dash 8-100 regional turboprop. The program targets a 30 percent improvement in fuel efficiency and an equivalent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions compared to current regional Commercial-Aircraft.

Integration and testing timeline

The RTX demonstrator propulsion system pairs a Pratt & Whitney Canada thermal engine with a 1-megawatt electric motor developed by Collins Aerospace. H55’s battery modules will power the electric motor during optimized phases of flight to reduce the load on the thermal engine.

Pratt & Whitney Canada initially selected H55 to provide the battery pack for the regional hybrid-electric flight demonstrator program on May 19, 2022. The integrated hybrid-electric Propulsion system and batteries subsequently completed a first full-power ground test on June 16, 2025. With the production-conforming modules now delivered to the Pratt & Whitney Canada facility in Montreal, the program moves toward final integration and flight testing. AeroTEC will support the flight test campaign at its facility in Moses Lake, Washington.

Certification-grade architecture

In March 2026, H55 confirmed that Pratt & Whitney Canada built the demonstrator’s compliance baseline on the H55 architecture. The system has accumulated more than 2,000 flight hours and undergone validation through European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) test campaigns.

H55 Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer Sébastien Demont emphasized the industry requirement for industrialized manufacturing and operational reliability as Electric-Aviation matures.

“Aircraft Manufacturers today require more than battery technology. They require certification-grade safety architecture, industrialized manufacturing, operational reliability and scalable systems integration. Delivering production-conforming modules into the RTX Hybrid-Electric Flight Demonstrator validates H55’s ability to meet those requirements at an industrial scale and marks an important step in bringing our certification-grade energy storage technologies to a broader range of commercial aerospace applications.”

AirPro News analysis

The delivery of flight-ready, certification-grade hardware remains a significant bottleneck in aerospace electrification. By supplying modules that already align with EASA validation frameworks, H55 reduces the certification risk for the broader RTX demonstrator program. We view the integration of a 1-megawatt electric motor with a 200 kWh battery system on a Dash 8-100 airframe as a highly pragmatic testbed. It allows the industry to evaluate thermal management, battery degradation, and hybrid power-sharing in a representative regional airline profile before committing to clean-sheet aircraft designs.

Sources: H55