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In addition to providing thrust, the engines on conventional civil jet airliners generate power for on-board systems and ancillary loads in the form of pneumatic, hydraulic and electrical power. Reduced fuel-burn and efficiency targets have driven the move towards More Electric Aircraft (MEA) technology which seeks to replace hydraulic and pneumatic loads with electrical equivalents. This technological shift, in conjunction with a growing electrical power load per passenger in general, has greatly increased the electrical power demands of aircraft in recent years - over 1 MVA for the Boeing 787 for example. With increasing fuel prices, there is a growing need to optimise efficiency of power extraction from the aircraft engines for the electrical system and loads. In particular, the utilisation of multi-shaft power off-takes, interconnected generation and power sharing between shafts is thought to offer potentially significant engine operability and fuel efficiency benefits.

Complex certification issues aside, aircraft electrical systems possess a number of attributes that present good opportunities for the implementation of adaptive protection systems. Rather than experiencing the complex upgrade process faced in the application of adaptive protection to grid based networks, the opportunity to incorporate their functionality at the design stage of new aircraft systems encourages their use and even offers the potential to implement highly integrated protection and control systems. The physically compact nature of aircraft electrical systems and the presence of an existing communications infrastructure should permit the use of both local and remotely obtained power system data within the adaptive protection systems, maximizing the opportunities for achieving highly capable systems.