Beacon Power growth brings more jobs to Tyngsboro

While addressing selectmen during the board's inaugural "Business Time" segment on Nov. 16, Beacon Power's Human Resources Director Steve Coughlin said that even though the company broke ground last week on a 20-megawatt flywheel technology facility in Stephentown, N.Y., the "unmanned" plant's ongoing commercial operation will be managed remotely by engineers in Tyngsboro at 65 Middlesex Road.

"The good news is, wherever the plants are, we will add people and those people will work here in Tyngsboro," said Coughlin, who is also a Tyngsboro resident. "So for the next year, we have plans to add 25 people, and for the following year, we should be adding another 25 people."

A publicly traded company on NASDAQ (stock symbol: BCON), Beacon Power's flywheel electricity-storage technology had been in development for 10 years before the company began commercial operations by connecting its first one-megawatt flywheel in Tyngsboro to ISO New England, the region's power grid, on Nov. 1, 2008.

In July, the company connected a second revenue-generating, one-megawatt flywheel to the grid.

Beacon Power employs 65 people at its Middlesex Road base location, half of them engineers, Coughlin said.

The company received a major boost when it became the first public alternative-energy firm to receive a $43 million loan guarantee from the federal Department of Energy, which helped fund construction of the 20-megawatt plant in Stephentown, according to Communications Director Gene Hunt.

The company intends to erect a second 20-megawatt plant in Schenectady, N.Y., by 2011, and has applied for a $23 million federal stimulus grant to assist with that, Hunt said.

"Each of these 20-megawatt plants has 20 flywheels, weighing 8,000 pounds each, and all of those components have to be assembled, and that will happen right here in Tyngsboro," Hunt said.

During a slide-show presentation at the televised selectmen's meeting, Hunt attempted a simple explanation of how Beacon Power's technology works.

"The way energy is generated by fossil-fuel plants that ramp up and down, there often can be too much energy on the grid," Hunt said. "Beacon's flywheels absorb this electricity that otherwise would be wasted. Every four seconds, around the clock, we're taking commands from the grid operator, New England ISO, based in Holyoke. When they have too much power, they can now store it with us, with our high-speed flywheel spinning to hold the electricity in the form of kinetic energy."

When regional energy supplies dip, or demand increases, Beacon Power can then "re-inject" stored electricity back into the grid, Hunt explained.

Currently, there's a greater demand -- and better pricing -- for frequency regulation in New York than in New England, which is why Beacon Power's current expansion plans are focused on New York, said Hunt.

The Associated Press reported yesterday that Beacon Power has also been awarded $24 million in stimulus funding to build a flywheel plant in Chicago.

The grant, announced Tuesday, will cover half the estimated costs of the 20-megawatt plant.

Selectmen Chairman Rich Levine praised Beacon Power's representatives for their achievements to-date, and pledged the board's assistance and cooperation with the company's expansion plans in Tyngsboro.

Selectman Elizabeth Coughlin said she's proud to have such an industry leader in clean-energy-based in Tyngsboro.

"You're being very low-key about having probably the greatest technology advance in present time," she told the Beacon Power executives. "As time goes by, I think people will begin to understand what a huge thing this is and what a great discovery it is."

To see more of The Sun, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to
http://www.lowellsun.com. Copyright (c) 2009, The Sun, Lowell, Mass. Distributed
by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email
tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax
to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave.,
Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.

For full details on Beacon Power Corp (BCON) BCON. Beacon Power Corp (BCON) has Short Term PowerRatings at TradingMarkets. Details on Beacon Power Corp (BCON) Short Term PowerRatings is available at This Link.