Beacon Power Corporation (Beacon Power) has announced that a one-megawatt (MW) Smart Energy Matrix has been operating at over 90% average availability in alternative technologies pilot program of ISO New England since January 1, 2009. The company is expecting to improve the performance of the system by making slight changes which will allow it to respond better to the ISO New England control signal.
We have been impressed with the performance of ISO New England in implementing the pilot program on schedule. We’re pleased to be active participants in this important program with our energy storage technology. Beacon Power president and chief executive officer, Bill Capp said.
The New York and California ISOs have employed control signaling to operate the company’s flywheels in 2006/2007 technology demonstration programs operated the systems at multiple levels over their entire performance range. This control method required the flywheels to respond proportionally to variable imbalances between electricity supply and demand. In contrast, ISO New England has been operating company’s system using a non-proportional, trinary signal. The trinary control method requires the system to be in one of three states – either fully charging, neutral, or fully discharging. Beacon has found that the trinary method of operation does not fully utilize the performance capabilities of the flywheel system, and it causes the flywheels to operate at a higher temperature than the proportional control method. To compensate for ISO New England’s current control method, the 1-MW system has occasionally been operated at a slightly lower overall output, pending a refinement of the motor-generator design. This design improvement is now being implemented.
Although we do not expect that the current ISO New England control signal will prove to be the best one for optimizing system benefits for the ISO, our motor-generator refinements should better meet the tougher conditions imposed by the trinary signal being used during this phase of the pilot program. Bill Capp also added.
The deployment of two additional megawatts of regulation capacity at Beacon’s Tyngsboro, Mass., headquarters has been slowed by severe winter weather and the analysis and refinement of the motor-generator as described above. Beacon expects that this additional 2 MW of capacity will be generating revenue on the ISO New England grid by the end of first quarter of 2009, rather than the end of 2008 as originally targeted. This will bring the total capacity at the Tyngsboro site to 3 megawatt (MW).
The fourth and fifth MWs of capacity originally planned for the ISO New England pilot program will instead be deployed to company’s site in Stephentown, New York, and to a second site in either the PJM Interconnection or the Midwest ISO. This will allow company to gain bidding and operations experience in two additional regulation markets and broader visibility as a regulation service provider. The New York system will be interconnected to NYSEG, a state utility with which Beacon has already entered into an interconnection agreement. The New York ISO is expected to open the market for energy storage-based regulation services by mid-2009.