History
Beacon Power was founded in Woburn, Massachusetts in 1997 as a subsidiary of SatCon Technology Corporation, a maker of alternative energy management systems. The company went public in 2000. [5] [6] [7]
In June 2008, Beacon Power opened new headquarters in Tyngsboro, with financing from Massachusetts state agencies. The new facility is intended to support an expansion of the company's operation. [4]
In 2009 Beacon received a loan guarantee from the United States Department of Energy (DOE) for $43 million to build a 20-megawatt flywheel power plant in Stephentown, New York. [8] [9]
On 30 October 2011, the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection under in the United States bankruptcy court in Delaware. [10] [11] As part of the bankruptcy court proceedings, Beacon Power agreed on November 18 to sell its Stephentown facility to repay the DOE loan.
As of 6 February 2012, Rockland Capital, a private equity firm, bought the plant and most of the company's other assets for $30.5 million. [12] Rockland Capital intends to rehire most of staff and to provide the capital to build a second 20MW plant in Pennsylvania. [13]
On May 1, 2018, investment arm of RGA Labs acquired the company. [14]
The physical assets, the 20 MW NY Facility named Stephentown Spindle and the 20 MW facility Hazle Township PA were sold to Convergent Energy and Power [15]
Stephentown is a town in Rensselaer County, New York, United States. The population was 2,903 at the 2010 census. The town, which was originally Jericho Hallow in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, was renamed for Stephen Van Rensselaer. The town is located in the southeastern corner of the county, and has a sign proclaiming it to be the only Stephentown on Earth.
Southern Company is an American gas and electric utility holding company based in the southern United States. It is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, with executive offices also located in Birmingham, Alabama. The company is the second largest utility company in the U.S. in terms of customer base, as of 2021. Through its subsidiaries it serves 9 million gas and electric utility customers in 6 states. Southern Company's regulated regional electric utilities serve a 120,000-square-mile (310,000 km2) territory with 27,000 miles (43,000 km) of distribution lines.
Grid energy storage is a collection of methods used for energy storage on a large scale within an electrical power grid. Electrical energy is stored during times when electricity is plentiful and inexpensive or when demand is low, and later returned to the grid when demand is high, and electricity prices tend to be higher.
Constellation Energy Corporation is an energy company headquartered in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. The company provides electric power, natural gas, and energy management services. It has approximately two million customers across the continental United States.
Stirling Energy Systems was a Scottsdale, Arizona-based company which developed equipment for utility-scale renewable energy power plants and distributed electrical generating systems using parabolic dish and stirling engine technology, touted as the highest efficiency solar technology.
A123 Systems, LLC, a subsidiary of the Chinese Wanxiang Group Holdings, is a developer and manufacturer of lithium iron phosphate batteries and energy storage systems.
There are several solar power plants in the Mojave Desert which supply power to the electricity grid. Insolation in the Mojave Desert is among the best available in the United States, and some significant population centers are located in the area. These plants can generally be built in a few years because solar plants are built almost entirely with modular, readily available materials. Solar Energy Generating Systems (SEGS) is the name given to nine solar power plants in the Mojave Desert which were built in the 1980s, the first commercial solar plant. These plants have a combined capacity of 354 megawatts (MW) which made them the largest solar power installation in the world, until Ivanpah Solar Power Facility was finished in 2014.
Spain is one of the first countries to deploy large-scale solar photovoltaics, and is the world leader in concentrated solar power (CSP) production.
According to preliminary data from the US Energy Information Administration, renewable energy accounted for about 12.6% of total primary energy consumption and about 19.8% of the domestically produced electricity in the United States in 2020.
Solar power includes solar farms as well as local distributed generation, mostly on rooftops and increasingly from community solar arrays. In 2021, utility-scale solar power generated 115 terawatt-hours (TWh), or 2.8% of electricity in the United States. Total solar generation that year, including estimated small-scale photovoltaic generation, was 164 TWh.
SolarReserve was a developer of utility-scale solar power projects which include Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) and Photovoltaic (PV) technology. The company has commercialized solar thermal energy storage technology that enables solar power tower CSP plants to deliver electricity day and night. In this technology, a molten salt is used to capture the energy from the sun and store it. When electricity is needed, the stored liquid salt is used to turn water into steam to turn a turbine and generate electricity.
Flywheel energy storage (FES) works by accelerating a rotor (flywheel) to a very high speed and maintaining the energy in the system as rotational energy. When energy is extracted from the system, the flywheel's rotational speed is reduced as a consequence of the principle of conservation of energy; adding energy to the system correspondingly results in an increase in the speed of the flywheel.
The nuclear energy policy of the United States began in 1954 and continued with the ongoing building of nuclear power plants, the enactment of numerous pieces of legislation such as the Energy Reorganization Act of 1974, and the implementation of countless policies which have guided the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Department of Energy in the regulation and growth of nuclear energy companies. This includes, but is not limited to, regulations of nuclear facilities, waste storage, decommissioning of weapons-grade materials, uranium mining, and funding for nuclear companies, along with an increase in power plant building. Both legislation and bureaucratic regulations of nuclear energy in the United States have been shaped by scientific research, private industries' wishes, and public opinion, which has shifted over time and as a result of different nuclear disasters.
Solar Trust of America was an integrated solar industrial solutions company founded in 2009 and based in Oakland, California. The company was developing the Blythe Solar Power Project, the largest solar plant in the world in the Mojave Desert, among other projects. The company was noted for having turned down a $2.1 billion loan guarantee by the Department of Energy (DOE) for the construction of the Blythe project. Uwe T. Schmidt was CEO. On April 2, 2012, the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
The Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project is a solar thermal power project with an installed capacity of 110 megawatt (MW) and 1.1 gigawatt-hours of energy storage located near Tonopah, about 190 miles (310 km) northwest of Las Vegas. Crescent Dunes is the first commercial concentrated solar power (CSP) plant with a central receiver tower and advanced molten salt energy storage technology, following the experimental Solar Two.
The Agua Caliente Solar Project is a 290 megawatt (MWAC) photovoltaic power station, built in Yuma County, Arizona using 5.2 million cadmium telluride modules made by the U.S. thin-film manufacturer First Solar. It was the largest solar facility in the world when the project was commissioned in April 2014.
The Mojave Solar Project (MSP) is a concentrated solar power (CSP) facility in the Mojave Desert in California, about 20 miles (32 km) northwest of Barstow. Surrounding the hamlet of Lockhart, Mojave Solar is adjacent to Harper Lake and the SEGS VIII–IX solar plant.
Satcon Technology Corporation is an energy and power company originally based in Cambridge, and later Boston, Massachusetts. Its markets include the utility, hybrid vehicle, ship building, industrial automation, semiconductor processing, and defense.
Younicos was a German-American technology company that developed and sold energy storage systems and control software. The company integrated battery technologies, power electronics and control software to create systems that respond to the energy management requirements of power networks of all sizes, including micro-grids.
