Flywheel

Beacon Power Corp (BCON) announced that it has recently been awarded a United States patent for the unique design and construction of its composite flywheel rim, and that a few days ago, it received a written notification that another U.S. patent on the rim is to be granted in early February 2005. The composite rim is a key component of a flywheel energy storage system, as a rim's mass and ability to spin at high speeds have a direct relationship to the amount of energy that can be stored. Beacon Power, a pioneer in this technology, has been...

SatCon Technology Corporation (SATC) announced that it has received a follow-on purchase order for a second 2200 kVA Rotary Uninterruptible Power Supply (RUPS) on a government contract valued in excess of $1.1 million. SatCon's StarSine(TM) Rotary UPS is designed to provide both high quality electrical power during normal operation, as well as prevent any interruption of electricity to critical manufacturing processes, telecommunication centers, data centers, and healthcare facilities in the event of power grid failures such as black-outs and brown-outs. The RUPS is connected directly to SatCon's patented flywheel for short duration power disturbances and is integrated...

Active Power Inc (ACPW) announced the shipment of its first CleanSource® XR evaluation unit to one of the largest producers of electricity in the United States. The CleanSource XR unit will be tested under a variety of conditions for both backup power and load-shifting applications. CleanSource XR stores energy in the form of heat and compressed air. When power is needed, the compressed air is routed through a thermal storage unit to acquire heat energy. The heated air spins a simple turbine-alternator to produce 5 to 85 kW of electric power for up to several hours. Unlike commonly...

Beacon Power Corp (BCON) was up over 147% at the close today. This move was primarily based on two project wins. One with the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority and the other with the California Energy Commission. The projects would have Beacon Power provide grid frequency regulation and reactive power by utilizing its flywheel energy storage system. The final terms and conditions of the projects have not been disclosed.

By: Matthew Hoff For power providers, grid stabilization has been a rising concern in recent years, especially because of the increasing use of intermittent energy sources such as wind turbines. Maintaining a stabilized energy grid is difficult because of the unpredictability of these intermittent energy sources. If wind turbines, for example, are supplying 5% of the overall power for the electric grid and the turbines stop moving because the air grows still, the grid has to find a way to kick into overdrive to compensate for this sudden decrease in energy. It's not as easy as it sounds....

Beacon Power Corp (BCON) announced that on November 17 it received a letter dated November 16, 2004 from the Nasdaq Stock Market, stating that the Nasdaq Listing Qualifications Panel has granted the Company an additional 180 days to regain compliance with marketplace Rule 4310(c)(4). What this means is that Beacon is going to do everything in its power to get the stock price back above $1. They had a nice run up to .80 in October but have since fallen back down to the .40 range. Shares in BCON are up 10% today on this reprieve.

John Petersen The next couple months are shaping up as a time of extraordinary change in the energy storage sector. Events that will drive the change include: Press reports indicate that the Department of Energy will be ready to announce it's preliminary decisions on the allocation of $2 billion in ARRA battery manufacturing grants sometime this week; We've seen numerous reports on automaker's plans to begin manufacturing PHEVs and EVs in limited volumes for testing and demonstration purposes; New tailpipe emission standards in Europe and accelerated CAFE standards...

Beacon Power Corp (BCON) announced that on March 2, 2005, it received a letter from The NASDAQ Stock Market stating that because the closing bid price of the Beacon's common stock has been at $1.00 per share or greater for at least 10 consecutive business days, Beacon has regained compliance with Marketplace Rule 4310(c)(4). This is wonderful news for BCON.

John Petersen With only a couple trading days left in 2009, this is as good a time as any for a performance review. The predictions I made at this time last year were pretty solid with an 80% accuracy rate on price direction. For the year, a $1,000 investment in each of my green star companies would have yielded a portfolio appreciation of 67%, which handily beat the broader market indices. That being said, my star and caution ratings were a good deal less prescient because I seriously underestimated the potential of both Maxwell Technologies (MXWL) and Active...

John Petersen In December 2008 I went hunting for opportunities in the energy storage sector and selected six pure-play stocks that seemed seriously undervalued. I bought Enersys (ENS) at $6.00, Exide Technologies (XIDE) at $2.00 and Active Power (ACPW) at $0.26. While Enersys and Exide have been fabulous performers with appreciation to date of 442% and 397%, respectively, Active Power has been the runaway champion with appreciation to date of 923%. My other three picks have performed poorly. C&D Technologies (CHHP.PK) is down 96% and finalizing a restructuring that will give 95% of its equity to...

America’s electric power grid is subject to immense inefficiencies that arise from the interplay between centralized power generation, local power consumption and on demand utility service. To put things into a broad perspective, the nameplate capacity of U.S. generating facilities is about 1 million Megawatts (MW), so if all of our power plants ran 24/7 we would have a theoretical annual generating capacity of 8.7 billion Megawatt-hours (MWh). Since demand for electricity fluctuates on both a daily and seasonal basis, total electric power generation in 2007 was only 4.2 billion MWh, or less than 50% of nameplate...

In June, I wrote how intermittent power sources such as photovoltaics and wind would have to compete with baseload technologies such as IGCC "Clean Coal" and nuclear for capacity on the grid.  The key problem is that neither baseload technologies nor intermittent technologies are able to match themselves to the fluctuations of demand.  This creates a need for technologies which can fill the varying gaps between supply from these sources, and normal energy use.  From the comments, it seems like I was not completely clear how intermittent and baseload power cause problems for each other, so I will start...

In August of last year I wrote an article titled "Grid-based Energy Storage: Birth of a Giant." Over the last 12 months I've written a series of follow-on articles that discuss the principal classes of manufactured energy storage devices and the companies that are making or planning to make products for smart grid energy storage applications. My entire archive of articles on the energy storage sector is available here. One of the biggest problems I've encountered over the last year has been a dearth of reliable third party information that can help investors understand the breadth and...

Active Power Inc (ACPW) announced an order from Eaton Powerware for twelve 500 kW DC flywheel systems. These units will ship in the first half of 2006 and be used to upgrade the power infrastructure of an existing data center in the United States.

It’s official! Cleantech, the sixth industrial revolution, has arrived on time and in the midst of extraordinary crisis. Like every good revolution, blood is flowing in the streets; the guillotine is en route to Wall Street and the mob is so busy plotting retribution for the excesses of the past that most have no time to consider the future. But as yesterday’s dynasties decay, crumble and fall, a new generation of visionaries is already building on the wreckage of the past. These are indeed troubled times that bear an eerie resemblance to the opening sentence from A Tale of...

John Petersen Tom Lehrer is frequently credited with a quip that perfectly summarizes my feeling about the financial markets in the third quarter, "Apart from that Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?" During the quarter we were given box seats to classic political opera in two acts. Act One was set in Washington DC while Act Two moved to Europe so we could hear the same tortured songs of woe in a different language. We all know the opera has to end with the immensely popular "Kick the Can Chorus," but we suspended disbelief, bought into...