Originally Posted by
WingNut60
There also seems to be an assumption that electric motors are "light".
I am sure that there is room for lightening, but I can not imagine any motor of the required size being lighter than its equivalent gas turbine.
As for variable speed and contra-rotating fans, only with the penalty of (currently) heavy inverters and IGBT's.
Indeed. The Common Motor/Starter Controllers on the 787 are huge and weigh about 400lbs each. The only drive small motors like Engine Starters or Hydraulic pumps.
Each generator is rated at about 250KvA. Two on each engine and similar on the APU. So thereabouts 1.5MvA. Ok, a lot of that is redundancy power in case an engine fails but you get the gist.