Beacon Power Corporation (Nasdaq: BCON), a developer of utility-scale flywheel energy storage systems, has been selected for additional U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) funding.
The company can now negotiate an award of up to $2.25 million through DOE’s latest round of funding under the Advanced Research Projects Agency — Energy (ARPA-E).
Beacon has proposed to develop a highly advanced "flying ring" flywheel system. The development program would take place over a three-year period beginning later this year, and is valued at a total of $2.8 million, pending contractual agreement. ARPA-E grant recipients share a portion of the program cost, and Beacon would contribute $560,000, or 20% of the $2.8 million program total.
"We are extremely pleased to be included among this very select list of cutting-edge energy storage projects funded by ARPA-E," said Bill Capp, Beacon president and CEO. "The storage capacity of our current Gen 4 flywheel is unmatched by any other flywheel-based product, and its cycling capabilities and 20-year operational life are already well ahead of any chemical battery system. With this funding we will work to develop a lower-cost flywheel system that will advance the state of the art far beyond where it is today."
Beacon’s Gen 4 flywheel is currently deployed and earning revenue on the grid providing frequency regulation, a service that demands thousands of charge-discharge cycles each year. Beacon expects that the ARPA-E-funded flywheel system, if carried through to a commercial product, would be suitable for a variety of other applications where the cost per unit of stored energy is the most critical factor, and the number of charge-discharge cycles is somewhat less important. These applications include: large-scale ramping and load following support for wind and solar power in a way that reduces the need for standby regional peak power generator capacity; wind-diesel-storage hybrid systems that reduce diesel fuel consumption on island-based grids; and uninterruptible power supply (UPS) applications that require an hour or more of assured power.
Beacon’s proposal calls for initiating development of a next-generation flywheel energy storage module with a size of 100 kWh and 100 kW, capable of storing four times the energy at one-eighth the cost-per-energy-unit, as compared to the Company’s current Gen 4 flywheel. The new flywheel would be capable of more than 40,000 full charge/discharge cycles in its lifetime, thereby achieving a cost per storage cycle below ARPA-E’s goal of $0.025/kWh.
ARPA-E received 529 initial concept papers and encouraged approximately 164 applicants to submit full applications, of which only 43 were selected for awards.
In November 2009, Beacon broke ground a 20-MW flywheel frequency regulation plant in New York, which is backed by a $43 million loan guarantee from DOE.
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