Beacon Power flywheels get good spin

Massachusetts-based energy storage vendor Beacon Power (NASDAQ: BCON) has passed major hurdles in California, bringing the company a step closer to deploying its flywheel-based storage systems for electrical grid frequency regulation.

Previously only thought applicable for interruptible power supply (UPS) applications, Beacon has been working for more than four years to develop utility-grade mechanical flywheel systems to help smooth supply and demand issues at the multi-megawatt power grid level.

The technology is attracting attention, as flywheel-based systems appear to offer grid resiliency and environmental benefits when used for so-called frequency regulation—the process of removing and adding energy to and from the grid as needed in order to ensure a constant 60 Hz in power supplied to customers.

A flywheel is actually a kinetic, or mechanical battery, spinning at very high speeds to store energy that is instantly available when needed. "Flywheels have traditionally been able to release only a small amount of energy in a relatively small burst of power. Ours release a large amount of energy in a large burst of power," Beacon Power spokesman Gene Hunt told the Cleantech Group.

This week, Beacon announced that the California ISO, or independent System Operator—the not-for-profit corporation that operates the majority of California’s high-voltage wholesale power grid—certified the company's current third generation flywheel system, branded the "Smart Energy Matrix", for use in frequency regulation in the state.

Jim McIntosh, Director of Grid Operations for the California ISO, said the company's flywheel-based approach could become even more significant in the near future, given the increasing amount of energy the state anticipates bringing onto the grid from non-linear sources.

"As the amount of wind generation and other intermittent renewables increase in the next ten years, the need for high-speed regulation services will clearly increase."

Today, coal or natural gas power plants are currently used for grid frequency regulation. Flywheels could allow reassignment of these plants to power generation, or disintermediate them altogether, suggested McIntosh.

"The deployment of this technology for regulation services could also reduce the amount of regulation required from fossil generating plants, which would lower CO2 greenhouse gas emissions."

Beacon's current Smart Energy Matrix system is a 100-kilowatt scale-power flywheel energy storage system. It's a prototype for a planned 20-megawatt-level commercial system planned by Beacon. Flywheels had previously only been considered for lower-powered systems such as UPSes by Active Power (NASDAQ: ACPW).

"A 40-megawatt facility, or two of the plants that Beacon is now designing under a contract to the DOE, could provide a portion of the regulation services required by California ISO," noted California ISO's McIntosh.

This week the California Energy Commission, the state’s primary energy policy and planning agency, also had nice things to say about Beacon’s flywheel energy storage technology, after the company entered the final phases of completing a final review by the commission. It expects to be formally done the CEC review in three weeks.

According to Beacon spokesman Hunt, the company is a "small cap publicly traded company with limited cash" that is actively looking for new investment. It is also seeking project funds to move beyond its prototypes and build 20-megawatt facilities in three major markets in the U.S.: California, the Eastern Seaboard and Texas.