Beacon Power, has secured a commitment for $25 million in new funding from three of the company's previous investors. Good going, considering the company has reported just under $1 million in revenue in 2006, against a $12 million loss. So you wonder why the have such faith in this company and its technology . . . why not make a relatively safe investment in global equity, with at least some non-dollar denominated assets?

Those investors may well be betting on the Smart Energy 25 flywheel pictured here , which can be batched together to provide what Beacon Power calls a "Smart Energy Matrix" to generate megawatts of power. My general views on flywheels are (and yes, please feel free to contradict me with comments !);

i) At the backup/auxiliary power level, they're closer to commercial viability than fuel cells
ii) They have environmental and some performance benefits over batteries; mainly that they are non-toxic, have higher temperature tolerances and longer lifespans - perhaps as much as 20 years.
iii) As modular technology, they are more scaleable - i.e. just add another and another, and another . . .
iv) Their energy density as measured by watt hours per kilo is slightly inferior to a conventional lithium ion battery - 130 wh as opposed to 160 wh per kg.
v) Flywheels have a cult following not unusual in certain energy technology circles - it can be summarised as;

THIS IS THE ULTIMATE ANSWER TO EVERYTHING !

Here's a stock - Tanfield Group Plc - and a new sector - Electric Vehicles - I'm going to add to AEI shortly. Tanfield's subsidiary, Smith Electric, are unusual for an electric vehicle company because they focus on the delivery transport market, like the Newton truck above. My feeling is that this is really quite shrewd. The 2008 order book already contains orders for 600 vehicles.  Tesla and Lightning cars may be getting all the publicity - sexy-looking sport cars always do, yet there's a far greater likelihood of delivery vans going electric before your average family saloon, let alone horsepower intensive sports car.

The technical hurdles for an electric truck are of course far greater in terms of weight v. performance. Yet cities around the world - all of which are getting bigger - rightly or wrongly, are working hard to exclude high particulate polluting vehicles from their streets. That is helping to price in the likes of the  9 ton Newton truck. Powered by six batteries, it has a payload of 3,000kg; a top speed of 50mph and a range on one charge of up to 130 miles. Obviously they don't plan breaking into the long-distance freight business any time soon. But there are no end of large companies who take a view that for CSR reasons, they'd do well to have an electric fleet for metropolitan deliveries. And that's exactly what Sainsburys and TNT have done.

So the Tanfield Group, although it has had a big run-up from 10 p a share in 2004 to 180p today, has to be one stock whose progrress we look forward to watching at AEI, for some time to come.