Beacon Power, which closed today at 35 cents a share, just inked a $43 million dollar loan guarantee from the Department of Energy:

Beacon Power Corp. said today that it has closed a $43 million loan guaranteed by the U.S. Department of Energy that will help finance the energy storage plant it’s building in Stephentown, Rensselaer County.
The $69 million project, which uses large flywheels to store excess power from the electric grid, is currently under construction.
“With the closing of this financing for our first 20 megawatt plant, we look forward to growing the company,” said Beacon President Bill Capp.
Beacon, (Nasdaq: BCON) a Massachusetts-based firm, also is seeking a federal loan guarantee to underwrite part of a second energy storage plant it is planning to build in the Albany region. That plant would be located in Glenville, Schenectady County.
The DOE currently is evaluating Beacon’s loan application for the Glenville project.

The rest here.

The largest shareholder of Beacon Power is an entity called Quercus Trust, headed by wealthy philanthropist and investor David Gelbaum. Why the DOE needs to use taxpayer funds for someone who has given, according to this NY Times piece on Gelbaum, $200 million to the Sierra Club and $93.5 million to the ACLU is a question nobody seems to think worthy of asking Steven Chu. Maybe because Chu has a Nobel Prize and we don’t.

Gelbaum has also donated hundreds of millions of dollars to veterans groups, which is sadly coming to an end due to downturns in his portfolio. If it’s the case that Gelbaum is running out of cash to fund his ventures, then this loan guarantee looks more like a bailout, except taxpayers don’t get any of the upside. Heckuva job, Team Obama.