By Richard Cadena
A stagehand was setting up for Willie Nelson’s line check on the first day of his Luck Reunion festival outside of Austin, Texas last March, when he noticed an electrician running cable from a large, white container just off stage left, the likes of which he had never seen before. His curiosity got the better of him, so he wandered over and asked what it was . . .
“This is the battery bank that will be powering the sound and lighting for this stage,” he was told. “Batteries? Does that mean that the only smoke will be coming from Willie’s bus instead of from a diesel generator?” he asked. The stagehand was only cracking a joke, but he was onto something.
In the prior years, diesel generators were used to power three music stages at the festival, as is the common practice in live event production. This year, those generators were replaced by large banks of batteries and a temporary solar farm to charge and recharge them. Not only would that eliminate the carbon emissions and the toxins that generators spew into
the atmosphere, but the batteries are also quiet enough to live alongside the stage.
Read the full article in Lighting & Sound International Magazine
