Flywheel plant groundbreaking set June 21

Jun 05 - Standard-Speaker (Hazleton, PA)

 

When workers break ground for a plant at the Humboldt Industrial Park on June 21 they plan to install the first of 200 flywheels that will regulate energy for the electrical grid.

The flywheels spin to store electricity and slow to release electricity.

Beacon Power of Tyngsboro, Mass., unveiled plans for the flywheel plant three years ago and is ready to start construction after emerging from bankruptcy.

The plant will store up to 20 megawatts of electricity for 15 minutes while helping maintain power coursing through the grid at 60 cycles per second.

"If that goes astray, and they're not managing that, you could end up with blackouts and damage to electrical equipment," Eugene Hunt, a spokesman for Beacon, said.

Grid managers do a good job of avoiding blackouts, Hunt said, but they use plants powered by gas and coal to maintain the frequency.

"The big gas power plants really like to run at full, and ramping up and down is inefficient and produces more emissions," Hunt said.

Flywheels, in contrast, spin in vacuums levitated by electromagnets to reduce friction and respond instantly when signaled to add or subtract power from the grid.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in 2011 required grid operators to pay higher rates to facilities that use fast-responding technologies such as flywheels and lithium ion batteries because they do a better job of regulating frequency.

Beacon will take advantage of those rates to repay the costs of building the plant, about half of which will be financed privately. The other financing comes from a $29 million federal grant and a $5 million state grant.

Beacon began as a publicly traded company but became a private company, Beacon Power LLC, when Rockland Capital of Houston purchased the company's assets after the bankruptcy filing.

Under Rockland, Beacon hired employees, started repaying a $39 million federal loan and continued to operate a flywheel plant in Stephentown, N.Y.

The plant in Stephentown started in 2011 and, like Hazleton, is rated at 20 megawatts.

Lessons learned building the Stephentown plant should save money on construction in Hazleton, Hunt said.

Hayden Electric of Hazleton is the general contractor and Barry Isett and Associates, which has a Hazleton office, is engineer.

George F. Hayden of Hayden Electric said Beacon found the skilled workers needed to do the job in Hazleton.

"This is a great opportunity for Hazleton, a great opportunity for us," Hayden said. "We're excited to be part of the team, especially for the technology. Here we're getting something that is truly green energy (and) state of the art."

Earth moving to clear the site already has begun.

Construction should employ 40 workers and while the plant will be automated, two or three full-time jobs will be created after construction.

The construction schedule calls for installing the first flywheel at the grand opening, inserting 10 flywheels or 1 megawatt by September and completing the plant by May 2014.

Each flywheel weighs 1,000 pounds, stands 7 feet tall and is 3 feet, 8 inches around.

Workers will insert them into concrete culverts buried so only their tops will show above ground.

A trailer containing electrical equipment will stand next to every group of 10 flywheels. The 200 flywheels and 20 trailers will occupy 2.4 acres of Beacon's 9-acre property.

Tests at the plant in Stephentown indicate that noise from fans and cooling equipment will register the same decibel level as a flowing stream, Hunt said.

kjackson@standardspeaker.com

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