As the government starts to parcel out stimulus funds to cleantech companies, most of the focus is on smart grid, battery and solar companies. Very little has been said about flywheel technology — the latest beneficiary of the Department of Energy’s loan program with $43 million going to flywheel maker Beacon Power.
Used for energy storage, flywheels can be thought of as mechanical batteries that recycle electricity without any fuel requirements or harmful emissions. The energy is stored in kinetic form and fed back into the grid when needed. For this reason, it is an increasingly popular choice for hospitals and other emergency-response facilities that need an uninterrupted supply of electricity in case of outages.
Based in Massachusetts, Beacon has earmarked the DOE’s conditional loan guarantee for construction of a flywheel energy storage plant in upstate New York. Because the plant will add a stabilizing supply of energy to the region’s grid, it falls into the well-funded smart grid vertical of the stimulus package.
At the same time, wider adoption of flywheel technology eats away at demand for traditional fossil-fuel generators, pushing users closer to government mandated emissions standards. For example, one 20-megawatt flywheel plant (like the one planned for New York) can provide the same amount of energy as a typical coal-fired plant, reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 500,000 metric tons over the course of two decades, Beacon says.
As with most of the projects receiving loans and loan guarantees under the stimulus package’s banner, the company’s plant will only receive enough federal money to cover a fraction of its construction costs — up to 60 percent of the estimated $69 million price tag in this case. But that hasn’t deterred Beacon, which says the site is already prepped for construction later this year.
Beacon is traded on the NASDAQ as BCON. It is currently priced at 82 cents a share.
