Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Beacon Power, National Grid in collaboration deal

By Mass High Tech staff

Beacon Power Corp., a power storage technology developer in Tyngsborough, has signed a two-year agreement with the energy utility company National Grid. The deal enables the two companies to share data on Beacon Power’s flywheel energy storage systems, specifically the Smart Energy Matrix, and how it could operate with National Grid’s electricity transmission network.

National Grid officials said in a statement that the company is interested in the flywheel energy storage systems because of their “high efficiency, zero carbon emissions, and extremely fast response.”

Beacon Power (Nasdaq: BCON) and National Grid have collaborated in the past, including interconnection projects in Massachusetts and New York, and demonstration systems in New York and Amsterdam.

Beacon Power makes grid-level energy storage systems based on flywheel technology. The company has already built one megawatt of capacity, with an additional two megawatts at its Tyngsborough facility as part of a grid-based alternative energy storage pilot program launched by ISO New England Inc. An additional two megawatts of capacity, originally intented for the Tyngsborough facility, will be reallocated to two other ISOs, according to a Beacon Power spokesperson.

Founded in 1997, Beacon Power spun out of Boston-based SatCon Technology Corp.’s Energy Systems division. In 2000, the company went public and last year reported $1.4 million in revenue on a $13 million loss. In the third quarter of 2008, the company reported $4,000 in revenue, with a net loss of $5.6 million.

Editor's Note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly noted Beacon Power's current flywheel energy storage capacity. The company has one megawatt of flywheel energy storage capacity, with an additional two megawatts connected to the ISO NE grid for a total of three megawatts.