A music festival is turning heads with something other than the bands in its lineup, thanks to its unique means of powering the event. 

According to Tech Brew, organizers of the New Energy music festival, held on Governors Island in New York City, opted to power the entire event using solar energy rather than more traditional means of keeping the lights on and the sound systems pumping. 

The New Energy festival set out to show the world that solar power could replace diesel generators as the primary means of keeping music festivals hopping. 

Organizers used four batteries charged up at a solar EV charging facility outside New York City to power both of the festival's stages, food and beverage stands, and phone charging stations, and a fourth battery was available as backup. 

"The whole thinking is if we can just put this on display, we want the general public to come to these shows and just [understand] that it works," James McGinniss, one of the event's founders and CEO of clean energy company David Energy, told Tech Brew.

Typically, large events like music festivals will turn to diesel generators to provide their power. They're relatively portable, easy to use, and provide solid, consistent, reliable power for however long you need them, as long as you keep a steady supply of fuel going in. 

However, that comes at a price, in terms of both cost and pollution. Burning diesel fuel produces a number of pollutants, most prominently carbon dioxide. That goes into the atmosphere and contributes to planetary warming. 

It also produces nitrous oxide, volatile organic compounds, and particulate matter, which can contribute to respiratory problems and have been linked to cancer, cardiovascular issues, and strokes, per Rypos.

Domestic solar power is a fantastic way to eliminate those harmful pollutants and reduce your monthly power bill to $0 or close to it. 

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McGinniss hopes to expand the event in the coming years to show people that solar energy can power big events. 

"There's actually an economic model around having deployable solar and storage that can be a generator," he said. "If we can grow this up to a 10,000-person festival over the next couple years on Governors Island, then it can inspire the work of others to be like, 'Oh, wow, they're not using diesel generators. Maybe we don't have to, either.'"

Attendees this year said they saw the efforts as important. 

"It's a lot of money for me, but it's what I can really contribute in this moment to play some small part in making this happen," Nicholas Birkhead, an attendee and Carbon Reform fellow, said. 

"It's really important, in my opinion, for the clean energy people to lean in as hard as they can."

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