In today’s news, Beacon Power Corp. announced that it has signed an information sharing and performance evaluation agreement with National Grid (NYSE: NGG), an energy utility company with a market cap of more than $22 billion. National Grid will evaluate Beacon’s flywheel energy storage systems for fast-response frequency regulation, as well as wind-related ramp mitigation – a potentially large-scale grid stability application.

Beacon will work with National Grid to predict future increases in the demand for regulation capacity resulting from greater deployment of wind power. The companies will also work together to develop an optimal control algorithm for Beacon’s fast-response energy storage technology that would maximize regulation benefits on the grid.

“National Grid is committed to assessing new energy technologies and their capacity to help create a more efficient, environmentally responsible and cost-effective modern grid,” commented Stan Blazewicz, Vice President, Global Head of Technology for National Grid. “The positive attributes of flywheel energy storage – especially its high efficiency, zero carbon emissions, and extremely fast response – make it a technology of significant interest and one we are keen to investigate.”

“National Grid is one of the largest investor-owned utility companies in the world, with an extensive footprint in the United Kingdom as well as the northeastern U.S.,” stated Bill Capp, Beacon Power president and CEO. “Prior to this agreement, we collaborated closely with National Grid in 2006 and 2007 on our demonstration system in Amsterdam, New York, as well as more recently on three interconnection projects in Massachusetts and New York. We believe that additional benefits can come from the broader sharing of information provided by this new agreement.”

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