Power funding

The US Department of Energy (DOE) has offered $59m (£36m) in conditional loan guarantees to Nordic Windpower and Beacon Power.

Nordic Windpower has been offered $16m to support the expansion of its assembly plant in Pocatello, Idaho, where it produces a two-blade 1MW wind turbine that uses a patented teeter-hub technology that is claimed to make the turbine 10 per cent less costly to manufacture, install, operate and maintain than competing systems.

For its part, Beacon Power has been offered $43m to support the construction of its 20MW flywheel energy storage plant in Stephentown, New York.  Beacon's flywheel system is optimised to perform frequency regulation on utility grids by absorbing and discharging energy to maintain the consistency and reliability of the electric grid.

These are the second and third conditional commitments for loan guarantees made by the Obama administration. In March, the department made its first conditional loan guarantee for $535m to Solyndra, which plans to construct a manufacturing plant to bring its solar technology to the commercial market.

The loan guarantees will be supported through the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.