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The roots of ASPES go back into 1982 when at the Swiss Federal Technical University of Zurich, Switzerland, ETH Zurich, a „research group for the storage of energy“ was established.  The group was headed by Dr. Hans Asper, an electrical engineer who had graduated at ETH in 1951 and who had spent a good part of his life with different employers in California.  After his return to Switzerland in 1982 he hoped to bestow the last part of his professional career on ecological topics.  He focused his activities primarily on flywheels.
The work group developed in 1987 a modern concept for the design and manufacturing of prestressed composite fly wheels for which international patents were granted.  This lead to the construction of a machine for producing modern composite flywheels.  With the financial support from various sources, like the Swiss National Energy Research Fund NEFF, the ETH Zurich, and with private and corporate venture capital, a first prototype of a kinetic energy storage system was built, with 70 kW power, 0.5 kWh usable energy, and a nominal speed of 24’000 rpm.  The mainly successful project gained national and international attention and different national awards.  As a consequence the scientists involved in the project decided to join their forces in a small engineering company, so in 1989 ASPES Ingenieurunternehmung AG was founded.  This company still focuses it’s activities on solutions for fast spinning systems and on the design and production of modern composite flywheels.  With the deepened understanding of such systems the focus turned more and more to related problems of importance, like safety aspects, bearing concepts, electronic controls and power electronics, and as well to other related aspects.

Dr. Hans Asper left ASPES in 1992 and sold his shares completely in 1996 in order to become less dependent from the time consuming details and to gain more freedom for his own basic interests.  His merits for the start up of ASPES are out of question and his persistance in seeking new solutions for saving energy deserve deep respect.

ASPES owes special thanks to Prof. K. Reichert, head of the Institute for Electrical Machines at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology ETH Zurich. Prof. Reichert has supported the endeavors of ASPES with benevolence from the very beginning. He has repeatedly acted as an advisory council, and his contribution with the development of an electrical machine with minimised losses was instrumental for several flywheel projects.

In the recent past ASPES has completed flywheel systems of up to 250 kW power, 1.5 kWh usable energy content, and is active in various different yet related  projects.

In order to control theory under application conditions ASPES built and operates a small testing laboratory for fast spinning systems.