The length of the festival will play a major role in how much PV power you need. If it is only a couple days, you could start with a large, fully charged battery bank for day (night) 1 and then just bulk them up for the second day. If there is a resting period between events, the PV's will have time to fully recover the battery. A long event will be different as you must make all the power that is being consumed each day. A smaller PV array with a generator can work well. The generator will bulk the battery up in the AM and the PV array can be sized to carry the loads while finishing the battery charge.
Benn also mentioned powering the concession. A few years back a customer wanted to solar power a concession trailer. I determined that he used about 35kWh per day. There was no possible way to make that amount of power from PV's on the roof of a 20 foot trailer, never mind the space for storage batteries and power equipment. I'm not trying to be negative here. I'm am very enthusiastic about replacing small, highly polluting fuel generators with renewable energy sources but the logic of such a project needs to be carefully considered. Don't let a "cool" idea cloud the reality. Larry ----- Original Message ----- From: benn kilburn To: Wrenches Sent: Wednesday, April 27, 2011 3:51 PM Subject: [RE-wrenches] PV powered music festival Wrenches, I have been asked about sizing PV systems for a couple different music festivals that have been run solely off of generators in the past. The problem i'm having is determining the energy consumption of music/stage (amps, speakers, lights, etc...?) loads as well as concession. The organizers have never considered the kwh of electricity used and it has never been metered. I believe the attendance of one festival is expected to be in the range of 5000 and the other closer to 15000 over the course of a weekend. Do any of you have any experiences in this area? How were the loads determined? No doubt that generator back-up will still be needed, to what extent, will be determined. So what we're looking at would be a temporary off-grid PV system with generator back-up... Any suggestions on how to proceed with this one? benn DayStar Renewable Energy Inc. [email protected] 780-906-7807 HAVE A SUNNY DAY
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