BECAUSE SOLAR-POWERED OFF-GRID BEATS JUST HIT HARDER.

PARTNERS

SOLARPUNKS & DER Taskforce

with support from Sunbelt Rentals, Arcadia, Impulse Labs, and David Energy

and special thanks to Tony’s Chocolonely for a custom bar collaboration

BACKGROUND

For the last couple of years, both SOLARPUNKS & DER Taskforce (DERTF) have been scheming on ways to enjoy high-fidelity music in off-grid settings without the use of dirty diesel generators.

SOLARPUNKS is partially a sustainability initiative of Production Club, a creative studio specializing in large-scale live music productions, venue & studio design, and more. When searching for ways to eliminate fossil fuels from their productions, SOLARPUNKS started experimenting with the use of portable distributed energy resources (DERs), including a microgrid experiment at Burning Man.

As a collective of innovative energy professionals, DERTF had also been searching for ways to “DER-pill the youths” and tweeted about the idea of creating “eco raves.” After a fateful Twitter exchange, a new friendship was birthed with the shared mindset of driving renewable energy adoption through meaningful human & music-centric gatherings.

CONCEPT

With the recent increase in novel DERs applications including “vehicle-to-grid (V2G),” we’re excited to introduce a new “vehicle-to-rave (V2R)” deployment that serves as a small demonstration of the power of DERs in a mobile capacity.

While this "vehicle-2-rave" concept isn’t the exact energy system we’re advocating for, it serves as a little v1 demo to get the right decision makers chatting about the systems level solutions we need to replace fossil fuels with photons (while using culture as the tip of the spear!).

The activation took place at the afterparty for Dervos, the annual “unconference” for DERTF, and was attended by energy & culture juggernauts including Jigar Shah (Department of Energy), Jesse Jenkins (Princeton University), leaders from Mayor’s Office of Nightlife for New York City, and more.

ENERGY SYSTEM

We designed the V2R energy system using a donated Ford F-150® Lightning® truck rental (standard range) from Sunbelt Rentals. The 100 kWh max power capacity gave us plenty of headroom to account for maximum load power & total energy required over the duration of the event.

We powered the truck at a solar carport EV charging station in Brooklyn. While our preference is to use an islanded solar-based microgrid to ensure 100% pure renewable energy (similar to our creative community microgrid approach in LA), by charging during peak sun hours, we can assume that the grid mix is primarily solar & wind-based generation in our V2R “V1".

We then pulled up to the function and provide all power to the audio system (see below) and lighting elements via the electric vehicle’s pure sine wave generator. The power tap is a L14-30R 240V outlet in the truck bed, which provides 7.2kW max. The L14-30R tap was adapted to standard venue twist lock cabling and distributed throughout the event.

(see below for an image from a recent test we conducted at LA State Historic Park for Procession)