POWER
PEARCE HIRE IN ACTION
Seeing red and turning green Event power experts discuss the current state of the marketplace, new products, contract wins, and best practices
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n June, Festival Republic – the organiser of Download and Latitude – unveiled details of a research project with Music Declares Emergency. The research will look at the logistics of connecting more UK festivals to the national power grid, reducing the need to run generators on event and festival sites. Melvin Benn, managing director of Festival Republic, called the project a “game changer for outdoor live events”, reducing Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions and enabling promoters to produce more sustainable events. Festival Republic hopes that the research project will provide some answers so it can run fully renewably powered, grid-connected stages at three events in 2023. Plus, it wants to share the findings and help other organisers to follow suit. Grid power is a growing trend. Promoter Cuffe and Taylor is looking at grid power
Sponsored by Stuart Power Ltd
solutions and Agrekko is working with the organising committee of Birmingham 2022 to adopt a “mains first” approach. Where temporary energy is needed, Aggreko is providing 117 Stage V generators from 30kVA up to 600kVa running on hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO).
RENEWABLE POWER
MHM PLANT
Festival Republic has confirmed that this year’s Reading and Leeds will be powered by 100 per cent HVO biofuel – a renewable form of fuel that has 90 per cent less carbon equivalent emissions than regular diesel. All Points East will run on HVO too. Since the events industry was banned from using red diesel and rebated biofuels on April 1, organisers have been shocked by the impact that increasing fuel prices have had on their production costs. Therefore, more organisers are turning to alternative power sources.
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