General Compression, a Newton, MA-based energy storage company, announced today that it has “it has closed over $17 million in commitments to its Series A round of funding.” The funding, from U.S. Renewables Group and Duke Energy, will be used to build General Compression’s first commercial-scale wind power storage unit this year. The company declined to elaborate on its press release (pdf here), which did not specify if the $17 million is all new equity investment; General Compression sold $4.8 million in convertible securities in 2007 according to an SEC filing (a pdf of which is here). The startup’s energy storage system uses compressed air to save wind energy and send it out on transmission lines in a reliable way, as Wade described a few years back.
Author: Howard Lovy
Howard Lovy is a veteran journalist who has focused primarily on technology, science and innovation during the past decade.
In 2001, he helped launch Small Times Magazine, a nanotech publication based in Ann Arbor, MI, where he built the freelance team and worked closely with writers to set the tone and style for an emerging sector that had never before been covered from a business perspective. Lovy's work at Small Times, and on one of the first nanotechnology-themed blogs, helped him earn a reputation for making complex subjects understandable, interesting, and even entertaining for a broad audience. It also earned him the 2004 Prize in Communication from the Foresight Institute, a nanotech think tank.
In his freelance work, Lovy covers nanotechnology in addition to technological innovation in Michigan with an emphasis on efforts to survive and retool in the state's post-automotive age. Lovy's work has appeared in many publications, including Wired News, Salon.com, the Wall Street Journal, The Detroit News, The Scientist, the Forbes/Wolfe Nanotech Report, Michigan Messenger, and the Ann Arbor Chronicle.
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