Mar 22 - McClatchy-Tribune Regional News - Scott Stafford The Berkshire Eagle, Pittsfield, Mass.


On an unassuming little 3.5-acre piece of land a stone's throw from town hall, local history and renewable energy history is being made.

The price tag is $69 million.

Under construction on this little parcel is a 20-megawatt flywheel energy storage facility.

The Stephentown project is the maiden voyage of the technology developed and designed by Beacon Power, a publicly-traded company based in Tyngsboro.

 While flywheel technology has been around for centuries, it has never been used in this way, according to Gene Hunt, corporate communications director for Beacon Power. And while Stephentown has been around for a couple of centuries, it has never had an investment this big come to town, according to Tom Morelli, chairman of the Stephentown Planning Board.

Essentially, the flywheel is suspended between two magnetic fields. An electrical charge starts the wheel spinning at 16,000 revolutions per minute, and then the momentum is used to turn a power-generating turbine to produce electricity.

The flywheels are not the primary source of power generation. Rather, when there is too much power on the grid, it is shunted to the flywheel facility and used to set the flywheels in motion. Then, when the power is needed a few seconds or minutes later, the momentum of the flywheels is used to generate power back into the grid.

Its primary function is to provided electrical grid stability. This function is

typically performed with fossil fuel-burning electricity plants. But by using the flywheel facility, the need to ramp up a power generator fueled by natural gas, oil or coal is diminished, eliminating the CO2 emmissions, wear and tear on the energy plant, and the burning of fuel.

Figures provided by Hunt show that one 20-megawatt flywheel plant can provide the same regulation service as a coal-fired regulation plant and reduce CO2 emissions by more than 300,000 metric tons over a 20-year span, or the equivalent of planting 660,000 trees.

The spinning mass is 2,300 pounds in a structure that is seven feet tall and three feet in diameter. Each structure is encased in a concrete cylinder and installed in the ground. It takes 10 flywheels to provide one megawatt of capacity. The Stephentown plant will contain 200 flywheels.

The flywheel energy storage facility has 90 percent energy efficiency, no emissions, burns no fuel, makes very little noise and is, for the most part, underground. It is expected to operate for a minimum of 20 years without maintenance. The project will be completed and operational within a year.

Part of the financing package for the project includes a $43-million conditional loan guarantee commitment from the U.S. Department of Energy, Hunt said.

While this is the first of its kind, two others are being planned, he added. One will end up either in the Buffalo, N.Y. area or near Chicago. And as more of these plants come online, the more fuel is saved and emissions reduced.

Another byproduct of the Stephentown project is a recently-announced expansion of Beacon's employment base.

"Beacon Power's job expansion is welcome news for the Massachusetts clean energy cluster Governor [Deval L.] Patrick has championed forcefully," said Secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs Ian Bowles in a prepared statement. "And, as the nation makes the transition to a clean energy economy, advanced power storage technologies like Beacon's will find ever larger markets and more customers."

The flywheels are assembled at Beacon Power's manufacturing facility in Tyngsboro. The components are manufactured by a variety of producers around the country.

"With the help of the U.S. Department of Energy, which is supporting our first two full-scale plants, we are now committing to the expansion of our manufacturing capacity," said Bill Capp, Beacon president and CEO. "In addition to the hiring in Tyngsboro, we issued significant purchase commitments to our supplier base, which will create additional jobs in the region and other parts of the country. This growth in domestic clean energy jobs is helping to meet an important policy goal of the Obama administration."

Morelli noted that the planning board and Beacon Power have been working on the permitting of the project for nearly two years. Every concern expressed by residents, which included worries about safety, noise, and appearance, were resolved by the company. And engineering and legal firms hired by the town verified the technical and legal components of the project.

Hunt said the flywheel technology is a compatible solution to the erratic nature of energy produced by renewable sources such as solar and wind.

"This technology seems like the premier solution for storage of energy from renewable sources," Morelli agreed. "It certainly solves part of the riddle. And it is a key benchmark for Stephentown."

To reach Scott Stafford:

sstafford@berklshireeagle.com

or (413) 496-6241.

(c) 2010, McClatchy-Tribune Information Services