When you look at a hybrid automobile and a conventional car side by side, you wouldn’t necessarily notice any difference until you looked under the hood. That’s kind of how Sustainable Waves, a turnkey staging/lighting/sound systems provider in Austin, Texas, likes to think of itself when it delivers portable music and events stages complete with wash lighting and audio. Except when you look under their hood, you’ll see solar panels, not an internal combustion engine. Ever since Bonnie Raitt’s 2002 Green Highway tour, a traveling eco-circus that raised awareness about alternative energy solutions, the staging business has been looking for ways to go green, as much for the economics of it as the ecology. But Sustainable Waves seems to be the first to actually make the stage itself eco-friendly: the roofs of their four portable stages are lined with solar panels that are connected to a bank of 14-volt batteries beneath the stage.
From Cloudy to Clear
On a clear day, the stage can be powered directly from the energy collected by the solar panels, with an in-line inverter transforming the solar-generated DC electricity to alternating current. At night, the power source is shifted to the batteries, which can hold between four and seven hours worth (depending on the amount of power needed for various configurations of live music) of continuous 60-amp/120-volt AC power.
Even on cloudy days, the panels can still collect solar energy (for the same reason you still get sun-burned even though it’s overcast) at a lower rate, but still enough to generate 750 watts despite the marine layer surrounding San Francisco’s Outside Lands Festival last year. In the rare instance when they have to resort to a generator, it’s fueled with biodiesel.
A Lighter Footprint
The advantages are significant — Sustainable Waves’ stages can go where others cannot since it generates its own power. And if ecological sustainability is important to you, solar-powered stages reduce the carbon footprint of an event considerably. At the Temecula Valley International Jazz Festival last year the solar powered stage provided by Sustainable Waves avoided an estimated 1,000 pounds of CO2 in a single day.
But it’s the doing-well-by-doing-good angle that’s really interesting. It’s not uncommon for large companies like Pacific Gas & Electric and New Belgium Brewery to banner the stage at music events, but how often do you see them sponsoring the staging providers themselves?
Ecological Hipness
The association with ecological hipness that Sustainable Waves’ stages offer has become irresistible ever since the world has undergone its recent economic and political climate change. That’s been a big hit at events including Joshua Tree, X Games and Vans Warped tours.
Mark McLarry, co-founder of the company, expects it to cross the $1-million gross revenues threshold in this, its fifth year of existence, up over 65 percent from 2008. These are not huge numbers in the grand scheme of event and concert staging, but that growth rate is, given the overall economy.
Corporate Sponsorship
Corporate sponsorship of the company has helped insulate it from a downward trend in live corporate events. And they’ve drawn the attention of both Live Nation and AEG Live (which has created a position titled “Director of Sustainability”) as well as a couple of venture capital companies. “We’re not ready to make that move yet, but it’s been interesting,” McLarry acknowledges.
What’s especially interesting is that the cost of solar power technology doesn’t add a significant premium to the cost of building the stages. That might not have been the case even a decade ago, when global warming still had a high plausible deniability factor, but the proliferation of solar technology providers and solutions has created an economy of scale that’s lowered the cost of entry. In fact, one of these solar systems manufacturers, Outback Power Systems, is one of Sustainable Waves’ corporate sponsors.
The power component of their stage package has become so affordable that the company no longer quotes prices for it when it bids its lighting, sound and staffing services. “At the end of the day, we often have surplus power left over,” says McLarry.
Maybe, as a famous frog once noted, it ain’t easy being green. That makes being both green and profitable at the same time a wonderful thing. I can’t wait for the IPO.
