Flywheel energy storage co. Pentadyne packs away $2M

June 22, 2009 | Camille Ricketts | Comments | |

Pentadyne Power, a Chatsworth, Calif.-based developer of flywheel energy storage systems, has just closed $2 million in debt financing from an undisclosed source. The company previously brought in $80 million from Rustic Canyon Ventures, DTE Energy Ventures, MVV Innovation Portfolio, Nth Power and Loudwater Investment Partners, reports VentureWire.

It most recently took $22 million last September. At the time, it planned to use the money for overseas expansion. Flywheel systems store energy kinetically, rather than chemically like batteries. This makes them lighter, easier to transport and less harmful to the environment. A lot of Pentadyne’s clients are large data centers because flywheel systems radiate less heat. Hospitals are also a target market, needing an uninterrupted, reliable source of energy. At the same time, many users have complained of lower efficiency rates and energy waste. Pentadyne says its design minimizes these problems and requires less maintenance, saving clients up to $3,000 a year.

The company competes most directly with Active Power (NSDQ: ACPW). It successfully surpassed Active’s sales last fall, shipping 34 percent more systems. But this only accounted for $19.2 million in revenue, a tiny figure relative to the millions raked in by battery companies every year (which it technically rivals). With a higher price tag than most battery systems, flywheels have a tough road to hoe. If Pentadyne and its peers are to succeed, they must emphasize the eventual cost savings that can be achieved with their products — but even then it will probably remain a niche market.

Here’s a look at the flywheel technology:

[Image source: Active Power]

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About the Author, Camille Ricketts

Camille is the lead writer for GreenBeat. She came to VentureBeat from Google where she worked on its traditional platforms team, particularly in TV. Before that, she was a reporter for the Wall Street Journal in New York and London. Follow her on Twitter at @camillericketts, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat.

With GreenBeat 2009, VentureBeat's all-star conference on all things Smart Grid, coming up in November, Camille will be expanding coverage of this exciting space. Stay up to date by following @greenbeat2009 on Twitter or by becoming a fan of the event on Facebook here.

  • Jin
    Flywheel technology, by nature, has high efficiency (as high as 95%, for AC-AC), and fast response time (in milli-second). Its efficiency is the highest among all energy storage technologies. Typically, it cannot store large amount of energy. For data-center application PentaDyne is offering, the duration of storage in 10s of seconds. It has to be connected with a battery (most likely, Lead-Acid battery) or diesel generator set to be able to back up for minutes or hours. It radiates heat in motor/generator part. Large size of flywheel needs active cooling-water system.
  • I'm sorry but I must challenge your assertion on flywheel efficiency. Yes, they are incredibly efficient DC-DC, but the AC-DC-AC will drop their overall efficiency to much less than 95%, more like 85%.

    Of course, for the tiny amount of energy they must deliver, it's probably not an important discussion. Their application is for short pulse when needed, so the energy loss is not important.
  • Jin
    AC-AC i mean on the motor/generator side, not on the grid side. Flywheel motor/generator works not on 60Hz, and has to use AC-DC-motor for charging, and generator-DC-AC for discharging. Btw, the power electronics, i.e. the convertor and invertor, the efficiency of it is not that bad for now, likely <5%. But again, it all depends on the size, vendor, working condition, etc.
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  • flywheelenthusiast
    The Pentadyne flywheel connects to the DC bus of a UPS system. While the flywheel motor is AC output, it is converted to a constant voltage DC which emulates a battery expect it designed to provide only 10-20 seconds of back-up vs minutes that a battery can provide. Because most data centers use standby diesel gen sets that only take a few seconds to start once the utility fails, the idea is to use the flywheel energy to "bridge" the time from the utility failure to the genset start. Flywheels are a great alternative to batteries, with a number of benefits. Efficiency improvement is not one of them. The flywheels take about as much energy, if not more to keep them spinning than it takes to keep batteries charged. So going from batteries to flywheels doesn't effect the overall efficiency of the delivered power to the data center.

    Unfortunately Pentadyne is a poorly managed company that has burned through $80M and still not able to turn a profit. They had achieved tremendous success in commercializing the product in 2005 and growing sales in 2006 and 2007, but with a CEO change in 2007 the company has struggle with cost reduction, product reliability and now three years of flat sales.

    I like Active Power's play in the field as they are seeing good traction in power quality and also Vycon who is an up and coming company who's flywheel applications includes energy re-cycling markets for electric rail and cranes, which can be much more profitable than competing against batteries in the power quality segment.
  • RonHumphrey
    Can anyone tell me if any company is working on large scale flywheel storage technology for a possible national power grid renovation? Will it work for stabilizing solar/wind sources of power generation well enough to provide power when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing?
  • Name
    Beacon Power, http://www.beaconpower.com. The current product can store 25kwh with 100kw power output. And it will be bundled into 1MW, 5MW or 20MW energy storage plant for grid storage, such as frequency regulation, which is the application Beacon Power is doing today at NEISO. Flywheel for UPS is a niche application.