Beacon Power Integrates Additional Megawatt of Flywheel Energy Storage On New England Power Grid

Beacon Power Corporation (Nasdaq: BCON), a company that designs, develops and is commercializing advanced products and services to support more stable, reliable and efficient electricity grid operation, has successfully connected and integrated an additional megawatt (MW) of flywheel energy storage on the New England power grid. This brings to 3 MW the total capacity now in operation and earning revenue from frequency regulation services.

Beacon added the third MW as part of a planned expansion of the system that has been providing regulation service to the grid from the Company’s Tyngsboro, Mass., headquarters since November 2008, when the first MW was connected. In July 2009, Beacon connected a second MW, running separately on a different power line at the same site. Beacon has now successfully integrated multiple megawatts of flywheel energy storage as a system, operating on the same grid connection – an important technical accomplishment – with unified supervisory software and operational control systems.

“We’re quite pleased with the results we’re seeing in both technical development and commercial deployment,” said Bill Capp, Beacon president and CEO. “This latest achievement verifies our ability to interconnect, operate and control two 1-MW modules as an integrated subsystem of a full-scale 20-MW plant. Our 20-MW plants will be constructed by linking ten 2-MW subsystems together to achieve the full capacity. This ability to expand incrementally using 2-MW building blocks is a key technical element in our plan to build plants quickly and cost-effectively. Our 20-MW facility in Stephentown, New York, where construction has already begun, will utilize this same approach.”

Flywheel Energy Storage and Frequency Regulation
Frequency regulation is an essential service that helps balance the flow of electricity on the grid, minimize harmful fluctuations, and maintain proper grid frequency. Beacon’s innovative, fast-response, 20-MW flywheel energy storage plants will serve as a type of “shock absorber” to the grid. Because of their speed of response, flywheels can address and correct frequency deviations more effectively than conventional regulation methods – and at lower cost of operation.

The constantly spinning, high-performance flywheels perform this service by speeding up and slowing down as they absorb and inject electricity from and to the grid. This helps keep the frequency of the alternating current (AC) at 60 cycles per second, and helps prevent grid instabilities from becoming costly regional outages.

Beacon’s flywheel systems also make it easier for the grid to integrate intermittent renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar power, whose variability increases the need for regulation. Because Beacon’s flywheels only recycle electricity already generated, they do not consume fossil fuel or produce CO2 greenhouse gas emissions or other air pollutants, such as NOx or SO2. In addition, the energy capacity of flywheels does not degrade over time or as a function of the number of charge/discharge cycles incurred, nor do they contain toxic chemicals or hazardous materials.

About Beacon Power
Beacon Power Corporation designs, develops and is commercializing advanced products and services to support stable, reliable and efficient electricity grid operation. Beacon’s Smart Energy Matrix, now in production, is a non-polluting, megawatt-scale, utility-grade, flywheel-based solution designed to provide less expensive, and more sustainable and effective, frequency regulation services to the nation's power grid. The Company’s business strategy is both to supply frequency regulation services from its own plants, and to sell its systems directly to utilities or grid operators in some parts of North America and selected international markets. Beacon is a publicly traded company with its research, development and manufacturing facility in the U.S. For more information, visit www.beaconpower.com.

Safe Harbor Statements under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995:
This Material contained in this press release may include statements that are not historical facts and are considered “forward-looking” statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements reflect Beacon Power Corporation’s current views about future events, financial performances, and project development. These “forward-looking” statements are identified by the use of terms and phrases such as “will,” “believe,” “expect,” “plan,” “anticipate,” and similar expressions identifying forward-looking statements. Investors should not rely on forward-looking statements because they are subject to a variety of risks, uncertainties, and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from Beacon’s expectation. These factors include: a short operating history; a history of losses and anticipated continued losses from operations; the complexity and other challenges of arranging project financing and resources for one or more frequency regulation power plants, including uncertainty about whether we will be successful in finalizing the DOE loan guarantee support for our Stephentown, New York, facility, or complying with the conditions or ongoing covenants of that support; our need to comply with any disbursement or other conditions under the DOE grant program; a need to raise additional equity to fund the project and Beacon’s other operations in uncertain financial markets; conditions in target markets, including the fact that some ISOs have been slow to comply with FERC’s requirement to update market rules to include new technology such as the Company’s; our ability to obtain site interconnection approvals, landlord approvals, or other zoning and construction approvals in a timely manner; limited experience manufacturing commercial products or supplying frequency regulation services on a commercial basis; limited commercial contracts for revenues to date; the dependence of revenues on the achievement of product optimization, manufacturing and commercialization milestones; dependence on third-party suppliers; intense competition from companies with greater financial resources, especially from companies that are already in the frequency regulation market; possible government regulation that would impede the ability to market products or services or affect market size; possible product liability claims and the negative publicity which could result; any failure to protect intellectual property; retaining key executives and the possible need in the future to hire and retain key executives; the historical volatility of our stock price, as well as the volatility of the stock price of other companies in the energy sector, especially in view of the current situation in the financial markets generally. These factors are elaborated upon and other factors may be disclosed from time to time in Beacon Power filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Beacon Power expressly does not undertake any duty to update forward-looking statements.