Beacon Power, dropped 18% today on over $10 m of sales to finance ongoing operations, including the expected completion of Beacon's Smart Energy 25 flywheel development and the design of the first 20-megawatt frequency regulation power plant.

My general view is that flywheels are much closer to widespread commercial application than fuel cells, but that's not saying much. I was particularly intrigued to read earlier this year that research at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories indicates that 10 MW of fast-responding flywheel energy could provide the grid with the equivalent energy of 20 MW or more of traditional slow-responding power plant energy.

I'd like to know what kind of slow-responding power plant they are referring to. A semi warmed-up combined cycle gas turbine can start up in 3 minutes, a coal station perhaps 12 hours. 20 MW though is a really decent amount of power - the highest quantity so far for high-tech energy storage.

Active Power closed down 12.12% on Friday - the worst performing AEI stock of the day. It appears that a central cause is that preliminary findings showed it backdated certain stock option grants, and that it expects to incur additional stock-based compensation charges.

And the article continues;

"... it has not been determined whether any such charges would require a restatement of prior financial statements".

This is a great shame for a company which produces the largest commercially available flywheels - which has enjoyed some success, as I blogged about here last August. And the fact that flywheels still have enormous potential in the hybrid vehicle market.