LOS ANGELES, CA--(Marketwire - Nov 14, 2012) -   VYCON, the designer and manufacturer of environmentally friendly, high-speed energy storage flywheel systems, today announced that it has been awarded a $3.6 million contract by the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro) to install a Wayside Energy Storage Substation (WESS) at the L.A. Metro Red Line Westlake/MacArthur Park Station utilizing VYCON's REGEN clean energy flywheel systems.

The WESS is largely funded by the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) under the Transit Investments for Greenhouse Gas and Energy Reduction (TIGGER) with funds made available by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009.

VYCON's clean energy high-speed flywheel technology will recycle part of the energy in the system by absorbing and storing in kinetic form energy regenerated by braking trains in the line and returning this stored energy to trains in acceleration in a clean, instantaneous form. This recycling of energy will save electricity otherwise wasted in the form of heat. 

VYCON's REGEN flywheel system captures the wasted energy at cycles as low as once per minute and can scale up in power capacity with parallel systems.

The new WESS system will also demonstrate how it can replace Traction Power Substations (TPS) with voltage levels support, lower the cost of peak power demands, reduce energy consumption, decrease resistor bank and/or friction heat generation (wasted energy) and lower power demands to the utility during critical peak power usage.

In addition, potential benefits of the new WESS system include:

• Elimination of train slowdowns and stop/starts by correcting low voltage occurrences
• Increasing system reliability through greater power capacity
• Redundancy in power source for adjacent substation outage or emergencies

According to Metro's project manager Frank Castro, "Metro is committed to an extensive energy savings and sustainability program. In the last five years, two megawatts of photovoltaic energy-saving equipment has been already installed. The WESS Project alone, with its two megawatts of flywheel energy recycling power capacity, will double this number."

"The rail industry has been looking for a reliable energy storage technology that meets the heavy cycling demands of commuter and light rail," said Frank DeLattre, president of VYCON, Inc. "We are very pleased to be working with the Metro on this important project to demonstrate how our REGEN flywheel system will help to lower energy, operating and capital costs for transit authorities."

Over the next year, VYCON plans to collaborate with several transit agencies around the world to install demonstration sites that will provide real-world data for energy and power savings as well as validating REGEN's ability to eliminate voltage sag issues, and most importantly, the ability to replace chemical battery-based Traction Power Substations.

VYCON's environmentally friendly REGEN takes energy storage beyond the limitation of existing technologies through its patented flywheel technology. The VYCON flywheel stores kinetic energy in the form of a rotating mass and is designed for high power, short discharge applications. Patented technology used within the flywheel system includes a high speed motor/generator, contact-free magnetic bearings used to levitate and sustain the rotor during operation, and a control system that provides system information and performance. These innovative technologies enable the VYCON flywheel to charge and discharge at high rates for hundreds of thousands of cycles making conventional technologies obsolete.

For more information on VYCON's innovative green power solutions, contact VYCON at sales@vyconenergy.com or visit VYCON's web site at: www.vyconenergy.com.

About VYCON
VYCON is an innovator in the design and manufacturing of technologically advanced flywheel energy storage systems that enable a highly reliable, cost-effective and "Green" energy storage solution for a variety of applications. VYCON's products are applied in the power quality markets to provide back-up power in mission-critical applications and in the energy re-cycling markets for capturing and regenerating energy in crane, electric rail and distributed generation applications. VYCON is headquartered in Los Angeles, Calif.