Our History
Our predecessor company, Beacon Power Corporation, was founded in 1997 as a spin-off of SatCon's Energy Systems Division, to develop advanced flywheel-based energy storage technology. We became a separate operating entity in 1998, and went public in 2000. Our first flywheel systems, the first and second generations of our technology, were deployed in North America for telecommunications backup power applications.
Since 2004, the focus of our flywheel R&D has been to develop a system that could “recycle” electricity from the grid, absorbing it when demand dropped and injecting it when demand increased. The technology was successfully demonstrated from 2005-2007 and this led to the completion of development of our grid-scale Smart Energy 25 flywheel system, which is now being commercially deployed for the regulation of grid frequency.
In 2012, Rockland Capital, a private investment firm focused on the energy industry, acquired the assets and certain agreements of Beacon Power Corporation and placed them in a new privately-owned company named Beacon Power, LLC. Rockland continues to pursue the development and commercialization of Beacon’s flywheel technology.
