Beacon Power Corporation, a provider of advanced products and services that help in maintaining stability and reliability of electricity grid, has
reportedly announced that to enable smooth production of its grid-scale flywheel energy storage systems, the company is going to add 50 new employees to its workforce this year at its headquarters situated at Tyngsboro, Mass.
Recently, the company achieved a string of positive developments, including more than a full year of successful operation on the New England grid and a $43-million conditional loan guarantee commitment from the U.S. Department of Energy. The company was also awarded with a $24-million DOE smart grid stimulus grant, and was successful in raising $20 million in equity investment in December last year.
The company will leverage the investment as the remaining capital required to close the DOE loan and build its first full-scale 20 MW plant.
The increased workforce will help in the production of flywheel energy storage systems, which will installed at Beacon’s 20 MW plant in Stephentown, New York. The plant is under construction at the moment. This plant will begin offering frequency regulation, an essential grid-balancing service, on the New York State electricity grid in the fourth quarter of this year, which will help Beacon realize its investments in terms of revenues.
Currently, the company is engaged in hiring a variety of professionals including hardware engineers, project managers, market data analysts, and sales directors for both U.S. and international positions. Other positions are being offered in purchasing, finance, site development, manufacturing and production departments as well.
According to Bill Capp, president and CEO, Beacon, the company is now committed to the expansion of its manufacturing capacity with the help of the U.S. Department of Energy, which is supporting its first two full-scale plants. Capp continued that in addition to the hiring in Tyngsboro, Beacon issued significant purchase commitments to its supplier base, which will create additional jobs in the region and other parts of the country, and this growth in domestic clean energy jobs is helping to meet an important policy goal of the Obama administration.
In the words of Ian Bowles, secretary of energy and environmental affairs, the job expansion by Beacon Power is welcome news for the Massachusetts clean energy cluster, and as the nation makes the transition to a clean energy economy, advanced power storage technologies like Beacon’s will find ever larger markets and more customers.
In December 2009, Beacon Power Corporation had reportedly
connected and integrated an additional megawatt or ‘MW’ of flywheel energy storage on the New England power grid, which brought to 3 MW the total capacity now in operation and earning revenue from frequency regulation services.
Edited by
Erin Harrison
