Flywheel

Beacon Power Corp (BCON) reported revenue of $304,064, compared to revenue of $80,902 in the third quarter of 2004, an increase of $223,162, or 276%. Revenues for the nine months ending September 30, 2005, were $1,258,503, compared to $264,793 for the same period in 2004, an increase of $993,710, or 375%. Beacon Power reported a net loss of $2.1 million, or ($0.04) per share, compared to a net loss of $1.9 million or ($0.04) per share for the third quarter of 2005 and 2004, respectively, representing an increase of approximately $0.2 million or 16%. They ended the...

Beacon Power Corp (BCON) announced that it has been awarded a contract through the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), and co-funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) of the U.S. Department of Defense. The contract, valued at $750,000, is for the preliminary design of a space-based flywheel energy storage system for satellite applications, and is a Phase II award under the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program of the U.S. Small Business Administration's Office of Technology. Beacon announced completion of an associated Phase I project earlier this year. This was welcome news for this company...

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...

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 The next few days are going to be a very exciting time in the energy storage and electric vehicle sectors because the Obama Administration is preparing to announce a series of major ATVM Loan and ARRA Battery Manufacturing Grant awards. President Obama will be in Elkhart, Indiana where he will presumably announce an ATVM loan to Navistar (NAV) and may announce some additional ATVM loans or ARRA battery grants. Vice President Biden will be in Detroit where he is scheduled to announce one or more ARRA battery grants and perhaps some ATVM Loans. Secretary...

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...

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.

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...

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 In late June I wrote a forward looking article that identified several companies in my energy storage and vehicle electrification group that I expected to perform well or perform poorly during the third quarter. Since short-term market changes are notoriously hard to predict, it’s worthwhile to look back and see where I got things right and where I got them wrong. So I’ll start today with a quick summary table and assess the relative accuracy of my Q3 calls, and then turn my attention to Q4, which is shaping up as a time of bright opportunity...

John Petersen The most widely misunderstood subject in the field of energy storage is the potential for grid-based applications. They fire the imagination because the grid is so pervasive and the need is so great. They also present immense challenges to storage technology developers because the fundamental economic value per unit of grid-based energy storage is very low. While the subject of grid-based storage provides rich fodder for media reports and political posturing, the reality bears little relation to the perception. On March 9th, Lux Research published a sorely needed reality check in a new report titled "Grid...

Tom Konrad CFA How material is the failure of one of Beacon Power's (BCON) flywheels on July 27?<a href="http://www.altenergystocks.com/comm/content/beacon-power-corporation/" beacon="" power's="" (bcon) Last week, I published an article Four Clean Energy Value Stocks I'm Buying Now, including Beacon Power as one of the four.  My rationale for including Beacon was: Beacon has been operating their first commercial scale 20MW flywheel energy storage plant  since early this year without mishap, achieving full capacity in June.  They are set to begin construction of their second 20MW plant later this year, 54% of...

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...

Beacon Power Corp (BCON) is scheduled to deliver two presentations at conference sessions next week at the 2nd Annual POWER-GEN Renewable Energy Conference and Exhibition, held at the Las Vegas Hilton from March 1-3. Both presentations will focus on the role of flywheel energy storage systems, and Beacon's patented technology in particular, in critical power grid applications.

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....

Active Power Inc (ACPW) announced that it successfully operated a prototype of its new battery-free energy storage system at 10 kilowatts (kW) for over 2 hours, a milestone that positions the new product well for the telecommunications segment. "The runtime of this prototype system is already 60 times that of our flywheel product and yet offers the same battery-free benefits," stated Joe Pinkerton, Chairman and CEO of Active Power, Inc. "A battery-free system that provides hours of backup time will allow Active Power to pursue the $4 billion telecommunications backup power market."