Oops – forgot the link: https://cleantechnica.com/2026/04/19/from-beacon-to-amber-flywheels-missed-the-grid/
Back in the day I wrote about Beacon Power several times, although all the stories disappeared when the Nashua Telegraph’s new owners took over and swapped servers. The Massachusetts company was building flywheels: large heavy spinning disks to store and release power into the grid. It was a cool technology that seemed promising with two multi-megawatt plants operating. Then Beacon went under and flywheels mostly disappeared.
Michael Barnard at CleanTechnica has a long analysis of why flywheels haven’t taken off for energy storage or grid stability.
They are mechanically elegant, grounded in physics everyone understands, and they solve a real problem in principle. … Flywheels did not lose to one rival. They lost to a swarm of rivals, each better suited to a specific service.
Return to the Concord Monitor
Where is the rest of this story?
OOps – link has been added.