John Petersen

Alternative Energy, Regular Guy Stuff and Rainbow Stew

Paul, Beacon says that the principal target market for its flywheels is frequency regulation (i.e. making sure that the power flowing to users comes in at 60 cycles and 110 volts). Frequency regulation is a billion dollar segment that is critical right and will become increasingly important as inherently unstable sources like wind and solar are added to the grid. While the flywheels are great for frequency regulation because the application requires short bursts of high power, they can't provide power for more than a few minutes. So they won't work in applications that need power for more than 10 minutes or so.

The two principal contenders for the frequency regulation market will be flywheels or Li-ion batteries and I don't have a good enough sense of what the Beacon flywheels will cost to venture a guess as to which alternative will be more cost efficient. But I continue to believe that devices are easier to improve than chemistry, which favors flywheels over the long term as long as they start out on parity with Li-ion.