CNet has an article on funding for Beacon Power's energy storage technology - Flywheel power grid storage project gets DOE loan.

Beacon Power on Monday said it has closed a $43 million loan guarantee with the Department of Energy for a project to use flywheels to buffer 20 megawatts of power on the grid.

The loan covers 62.5 percent of the estimated $69 million needed to construct the flywheel storage plant in Stephentown, N.Y. The New York Energy Research and Development Authority is also providing $2 million in funding for the plant which is now under construction.

Once done, Beacon Power said that the plant will be the only one of its kind in the world. Rather than use a large battery, it will use a network of 200 flywheels to store electricity from the grid as kinetic energy and disperse it in quick bursts of up to 15 minutes.

Right now, grid operators typically use natural gas power plants to maintain a balance between supply and demand and keep a steady frequency of 60 cycles per second. The Stephentown project, expected to be completed by the end of the first quarter next year, will be able to provide 10 percent of the frequency regulation services in New York needed on a typical day.

The project is significant step up for the technology, which so far has been used in smaller-scale installation of about one megawatt of power.

The New York storage installation paves the way for higher penetration of solar and wind power generation. Since they are variable sources of power, utilities are looking at different forms of grid storage to smooth out the delivery of power from renewable sources.

Renewable Energy World has a report on reasonably large scale energy storage using flywheels - Beacon Power Tests Megawatt of Flywheel Storage . The device can pump out 1 MW for 15 minutes.

Beacon Power Corporation, a company that designs and develops products and services to support electricity grid operation, announced that it has built and tested an integrated matrix of ten high-power flywheels that when operated together can absorb and supply a full megawatt (MW) of electricity. The system, located in Beacon's headquarters, will be the first of up to 5 MW of flywheel-based regulation capability that will be produced this year and commercially deployed to generate revenues from the provision of regulation services.

Until now, Beacon had been building and running individual flywheels in preparation for its first full megawatt implementation. Based on internal testing of an integrated matrix of ten flywheels, the company said that its one-megawatt Smart Energy Matrix can ramp up and down to absorb and supply a full megawatt of power.

Over the next few weeks, Beacon will begin system testing in conjunction with ISO New England, during which time the flywheel matrix will respond to actual ISO test signals to absorb and supply power. This plan will allow the company to meet its schedule to interconnect live to the grid and to begin performing frequency regulation services under an ISO New England Alternative Technologies Pilot Program scheduled to start on November 18.