Beacon Power Accelerating Production Plans to Build Nation’s First Full-Scale Flywheel Energy Storage Plant

Company Plans to Increase Its Workforce by More Than 75%

TYNGSBORO, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Beacon Power Corporation (Nasdaq: BCON), a leading provider of advanced products and services to support a more stable, reliable and efficient electricity grid, today announced that it plans to hire approximately 50 new employees this year at its Tyngsboro, Massachusetts, headquarters, as it ramps up production of its grid-scale flywheel energy storage systems.

“Beacon Power’s job expansion is welcome news for the Massachusetts clean energy cluster Governor Patrick has championed forcefully”

The decision to expand the Company’s workforce comes following a series of positive developments, including more than a full year of successful operation on the New England grid; a $43-million conditional loan guarantee commitment from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE); and the award of a $24-million DOE smart grid stimulus grant. Beacon also raised $20 million in equity investment in December, a portion of which will provide the remaining capital required to close the DOE loan and build the Company’s first full-scale 20 MW plant.

The flywheels being produced this year will be installed at Beacon’s 20 MW plant in Stephentown, New York, which is currently under construction. A portion of this first plant is expected to begin earning revenue by providing frequency regulation, an essential grid-balancing service, on the New York State electricity grid in the fourth quarter of this year.

“With the help of the U.S. Department of Energy, which is supporting our first two full-scale plants, we are now committing to the expansion of our manufacturing capacity,” said Bill Capp, Beacon president and CEO. “In addition to the hiring in Tyngsboro, we issued significant purchase commitments to our supplier base, which will create additional jobs in the region and other parts of the country. This growth in domestic clean energy jobs is helping to meet an important policy goal of the Obama administration.”

“Beacon Power’s job expansion is welcome news for the Massachusetts clean energy cluster Governor Patrick has championed forcefully,” said Secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs Ian Bowles. “And, as the nation makes the transition to a clean energy economy, advanced power storage technologies like Beacon’s will find ever larger markets and more customers.”

Beacon Power is hiring a variety of professionals including hardware engineers, project managers, market data analysts, and sales directors (both U.S. and international), as well as offering positions in purchasing, finance, site development, manufacturing and production. Additional information can be found at www.beaconpower.com.

About Beacon Power Corporation

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 systems directly to utilities or grid operators in 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: The 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 Beacon’s projects and its other operations in uncertain financial markets; conditions in target markets, including the fact that it has taken longer than anticipated for some ISOs 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.