American Flywheel Systems, Trinity Flywheel Power Merge; Calpine c*Power, Inc. Is First Strategic Partner
5 December 2000
American Flywheel Systems, Trinity Flywheel Power Merge; Calpine c*Power, Inc. Is First Strategic Partner
SEATTLE--Dec. 5, 2000--Two privately held companies, American Flywheel Systems, Inc. (AFS) and Trinity Flywheel Power (Trinity), today merged and created AFS Trinity Power Corporation (AFS Trinity) to address the $12 billion market for power technology serving the digital economy.Headquarters of the combined company will be in Seattle and most manufacturing and R&D will be located in Livermore, Calif., outside San Francisco; the company has no plans to relocate other R&D programs now operating on the East Coast, according to Edward W. Furia, who is Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the combined company. Former AlliedSignal executive Joel Levinthal is President and Chief Operating Officer of the combined company, and Trinity co-founder John Eastwood is Senior Vice President of AFS Trinity and General Manager of Livermore Operations.
First Strategic Partner
In a related announcement, AFS Trinity and Calpine c*Power, Inc., a subsidiary of Calpine Corporation , announced a strategic partnership in which AFS Trinity flywheel ride-through power products will be marketed by Calpine as an advanced component of Calpine's highly reliable power systems designed to service datacom ports. In the agreement, AFS Trinity products will be the exclusive flywheel UPS systems offered by Calpine to its datacom customers, and Calpine will have exclusive rights to co-brand AFS Trinity flywheel UPS products for such applications. AFS Trinity will retain rights to sell these products through other channels using AFS Trinity brands. No other details of the strategic relationship were disclosed.
Calpine c*Power President Robert Hepple said, "We regard AFS Trinity as the leader in flywheel UPS and ride-through technology. C*Power intends to use the most effective new power technologies in its advanced Reliable Power System designs being built for facilities supporting the digital economy because these facilities must be able to transact billions of critical operations every day with flawless reliability. The AFS Trinity flywheel will allow seamless switching of our redundant power sources, thus providing power quality heretofore unavailable from the conventional power grid."
Expected Merger Benefits
According to Furia, American Flywheel Systems, Inc., founded in 1990, is "the oldest and most technology-rich" flywheel power and energy storage company, and Trinity Flywheel Power is the first-to-market with advanced composite flywheel ride-through products.
He said, "AFS Trinity represents a combined investment of more than $45 million. The Company now holds licenses and other rights from two U.S. national laboratories, has been issued or is in the process of applying for over twenty U.S. and international patents and has intellectual property that includes more than a dozen additional patent disclosures for other high need markets such as transportation and communications. By infusing both AFS capital and technology into Trinity's compact and reliable flywheel ride-through and UPS systems, we intend to leapfrog chemical battery and other flywheel UPS and ride-through solutions. We are also well-positioned in the long term to address a wide range of future mission-critical power-bridging requirements of the expanding digital economy."
Offering 225kVA product
Last month, Trinity reported it is taking orders for up to 225 kVA (191 kW) super-fast recharge uninterruptible power systems (UPS) and ride-through systems with deliveries commencing in 2001. The Company believes these are the first flywheel systems that not only will handle initial power anomalies but also will protect the digital economy's critical network systems from rapid successions of minor and major sags and spikes.
Furia said the greater capabilities of these first products result from a bore-loaded, light and fast, composite flywheel rotor and iron-less motor generator, which, unlike heavier and slower steel flywheel UPS systems, which take 20 minutes to recharge, can discharge and recharge completely in 10 to 20 seconds.
The company reported that the new AFS Trinity technology produces the following benefits:
| -- | Recovery times which are 100 to 600 times faster than any other high power flywheel UPS or flywheel ride-through devices we know of -- recovery times which therefore provide protection from clusters of lightning strikes and other multiple minor as well as major sag and spike episodes. |
| -- | Systems that, because they are small, light and cool-running, do not need to be placed in their own battery rooms or equipment sheds but virtually anywhere -- inside, immediately adjacent to servers or PDUs, or outside in 0 to 120 degree F. environments. |
| -- | These are the only commercial flywheel UPS or ride-through systems that double as power flow management units. With recharge times measured in seconds instead of minutes they can absorb surges as well as smooth power flow in semiconductor manufacturing, tasks beyond the capability of any chemical battery and any other flywheel UPS system of which AFS Trinity is aware. |
The company said its products target the back-up power problems of a wide range of customers, such as digital equipment operators, hospitals, Internet service providers, semiconductor makers, airport control towers, credit card companies, commercial buildings and others who need clean, reliable, uninterruptible power.
The Merging Companies
American Flywheel Systems, Inc. was incorporated in 1991 to commercialize flywheel energy storage for the wide range of power and energy storage applications. In 1992 AFS announced it had been awarded the first United States and international patents for a flywheel battery. In 1994 at the Los Angeles Auto Show AFS showed the first working flywheel battery in a low speed, low power demonstration unit as well as a flywheel concept car that received extensive national and international coverage. The flywheel systems related to these introductions were the subject of a 5-year legal contest regarding contract and intellectual property rights that resulted in a verdict in AFS's favor, a cash settlement in 1999 and the right to patent additional intellectual property that includes more than a dozen system and component patent disclosures developed during the contract.
AFS developed highly advanced flywheel battery system technology and very high speed (80,000-100,000 rpm) rotor and magnetic bearing component technologies with Oak Ridge National Laboratories, the University of Virginia Magnetic Bearings Center, Georgia Tech, Honeywell and NASA. This work has resulted in AFS patent filings for breakthrough gain-scheduled controllers for magnetic bearings which the company views as the "pacing" technology for very high speed flywheel batteries for spacecraft, vehicular and other portable applications of the future. Additional U.S. and international filings have been made by AFS for a portable, light and very high speed flywheel battery system for vehicular and space applications. AFS was supported for 10 years by a group of distinguished individual investors led by the late Honorable Elliot Richardson, four-time former Presidential Cabinet member and Honorable James Schlesinger, former holder of two Presidential Cabinet positions, including service as the nation's first U.S. Secretary of Energy. Important additional funding came from federal and state government agencies including DARPA, NASA, SBA, the U.S. Army, the USAF, SMUD and CEC.
AFS received the prestigious national Tibbetts Award in 1999 for its revolutionary magnetic bearings controls work, one of only 37 companies of 5000 that were eligible to receive the award from NASA and SBA for excellence in technology development.
Trinity Flywheel Power was created in 1993 to commercialize flywheel architecture conceived by Dr. Richard Post, a Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories physicist, who visualized the concept of a flywheel battery in a seminal article in the Scientific American in 1973. That concept was the genesis of the flywheel ride-through system that was developed by the Trinity engineering team headed by Donald Bender, former assistant to Dr. Post. Starting with Post's concept, Trinity successfully integrated an advanced bore-loaded flywheel rotor into a practical and cost effective flywheel UPS system. Trinity's R&D was driven by private capital as well as awards of numerous federal and state government contracts. Trinity's light and fast flywheel rotors operate midway between heavy and slow flywheel UPS systems (8,000 rpm) and the high speed energy storage wheels (up to 100,000 rpm) of the future. These flywheels have been extensively tested in government-sponsored (DARPA) programs which showed that their rotational speeds (up to 44,000 rpm) provide a 200% energy storage safety margin. Prior to settling on the current configuration, Trinity shipped prototype and beta test units to diverse U.S. civilian and military customers as well as select Asian customers.
Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher and Flom LLP assists AFS in its acquisition and merger activities.
Some statements in this news release are forward-looking. These statements may be identified by the use of words such as "will," "expects," "believes," "targets," "intends," and words of similar import. Actual results may vary depending on circumstances both within and outside the control of the Company including market acceptance of products, technology development cycles and other risk factors. Neither AFS nor Trinity nor AFS Trinity take responsibility for updating any forward looking statements made in this release.