Many of the projects dreamed up in 2003 have been realized in 2007!!

Update! Post 2007 Burn Report! INSPIRE.

 

The Man project happened! (see below and read on!) A group of volunteers led by a few key full-time staff,pulled it off! They are a group of very curious, intelligent, talented and dedicated ( and funny ) souls who made the dream into a reality. The Man was powered by the sun all week long and according to the project manager, never needed to use the available backup biodiesel generators to charge the batteries. Black Rock Solar!!

After the weeks in on the playa, the solar array was donated to the local Gerlach school. Much of the rest of the energy needs of the event infrastructure was provided by homegrown biodiesel, but even that is set to change as solar and wind takes a more dominant place in the 2008 incarnation of the most amazing 50,000 person city in the world.

 

Staff and volunteers plan to continue finding ways to make renewable energy happen in other neighboring desert communities with a surplus of sun at the same time allowing for future infrastructure to be tested for the event, minimizing the annual event's carbon footprint. Of course until better vehicles are made available, our collective footprint will still be large, especially when one considers the far-flung parts of the world that many burners fly from and to. Which raises a question about mass storage. Here are some thoughts about a new project, which endeavors to produce and store much more power, while studying ways to reduce power requirements through lower power lights and appliances.

 

Conservation Payoff

 

Take another good hard look at consumption. The biggest gains for the lowest cost is in conservation. Consider replacing all lighting with LEDs. Make AC use more efficient if powered by grid, require reflective insulation or create large AC domes for sleeping staff, require connected camps to provide a power usage proposal and limit usage with circuit breakers. Promote low energy use in general.

 

Mass Storage

 

I think of this solution is to complete as much of the natural cycle as possible. I gift these ideas as a jumping off point. Have you seen the ingenuity out there on the playa? The possibilities for storing mass amounts of energy are great on the playa! Use solar and wind power to pump water uphill, then run it downhill through a hydroelectric generator. It is pretty flat there. Batteries are the most tried and true method and can be deployed in truckable units. Gassifying feedstocks to capture energy?

 

What about generating and storing electricity more efficiently? Could we grow enough algae fuel each day? Can we build a thermal engine? How about capturing heat from fire art, burn platforms and using it to generate power at night? Also, power can be made and stored exactly where it is needed. You could design a power system to be made up of several power stations which are independent, not requiring a large transmission grid. A distributed system is not subject to complete failure. With solar and wind, there is no carbon dioxide released. Community wastewater could be cleaned by playa tech designed by a bunch of wastewater engineer burners who are cleaning their wastewater to very high standards. Utilize people power, if some burners choose to use the machine to dispose of their wastewater, they have to provide some human effort to help to filter it, perhaps by simply requiring the depositor to lift the water above the treatment system. At night, when power generated by a wind farm does not meet demand, the battery banks will provide sufficient supply. The pure hot water produced from burn platforms, along with hot water from solar heating, would be made available to help reduce the need to individual camps to absolutely need showers, thus reducing the moop generated by showers all over the City. The showering water will be treated with a small amount of chlorine to meet health codes. Wastewater will be fed back into the treatment cycle and excess water, instead of entering the environment and effecting the Environmental Impact Statements required by the BLM, may be safely applied to the streets, thus saving vast emissions of carbon by reducing the truck travel distance to retrieve water. The Power Station can be located on the playa, but close to Center Camp, the Man, the keyholes and all of the streets. A limited power grid with AC transmission will allow all key infrastructure to be plugged into carbon-free sustainable power. Zone Black Rock City for generators and non-generators. Solar arrays and such may be placed anywhere. If you want to use generator power in an RV, you are camped in a zone with power hookup. RVs are all hooked up to larger central biodiesel gennies and people sharing this resource would pay for it, but in aggregate, would save money and reduce their carbon footprint. BMorg would promote this via a sanctioned non-profit. Power can be captured from burn platforms!!!!!! The Power Station should be owned by the organization and maintained, while the solar arrays, the wind generators can be traded out each year.

 

This project can involve hundreds of volunteers, and will draw upon the talents of many groups in the community, from the fire artists who can handle high pressure tanks, fire and other dangerous stuff, to the Alternative Energy Zone with their amazing innovations and inventions, to the average burner, carrying their water up a ramp, to the scraps and art projects we burn, generating very little carbon dioxide with the potential to be beautiful, amazing, functional, informative, inspiring, transformative.

   

 What follows are descriptions of possible renewable energy projects. These are not the only projects possible! Share YOUR idea and let's all collaborate to make great ideas reality. None of these ideas are in their final form, there is always room for collaboration, enhancements, simplifications, modifications, or other input from YOU.

Power Sculpture

I call on you and my other wonderfully talented friends to help create a large-scale sculpture way out on the playa. It might take a few minutes by bike to get there, but you would be able to see it clearly at night. Some of the structure would use a certain color and/or pattern of light. This light would be powered by a windmill and would be sized according to the generating ability of the windmill. The windmill's power would be visually represented. The windmill itself, off to the side would be illuminated with these same color/pattern lights.  Another color/pattern would be all powered by an array of solar panels. Similar to the wind powered light, they would be sized according to the generating ability (batteries would allow the power to be used at night when lights are more fun) and a final color/pattern light part of the sculpture might be much more dynamic. These might be human-powered, ideally in such a way that anyone with a bike could easily hook into the generation station and power lights. However in this case the number of lights on would correspond to the amount of human power generated, providing automatic feedback to the volunteer human generators. Power from all of these sources could be used to run a modest sound system, providing entertainment for the riders and non-riders alike. At a certain human-power threshold an additional subwoofer might kick in, providing incentive to pump one's legs in order to pump the tunes.

 

Without words such a project would allow people to explore alternative energy, play with fun toys and even boogie down, all without petroleum.

(maybe even power a blender and make daqueris?)

 

Solar Sound Stage

This idea is to power a small sound stage in the Center Camp Cafe (or elsewhere) , putting a windmill either outside or atop the Center Camp structure itself, with solar panels augmenting and diversifying generation capacity. The location of the Center Camp Cafe would have two distinct advantages. First, there would be no risk of having no power for lack of wind and sun, since the Center Camp/Cafe is on the power grid. The system could easily be switched to charge the batteries off of the grid. Secondly, the high traffic, public nature of the project would lend itself to inspiring the most number of people and providing an attractive photo for the press covering Burning Man.   

ECO-DISCO

This project consists of the purchase of the equipment necessary to provide the power for a medium-sized sound system needing an estimated 1000 (or more) watts sustained power. This sound system would be powered by wind and solar sources. Depending on the power requirements, a single commercial windmill will be purchased along with tower, batteries and inverters to provide the main generating source. In addition, but optional would be the purchase of several solar panels to insure adequate and diverse supply. A thorough search for equipment would be done with actual power requirements in consideration. Solar panels are more expensive on a per watt basis. However the advantages are worth the invenstment. If the wind isn't blowing, the sun usually shines and that would power a minimum amount to keep the batteries from discharging.  In order to assure adequate wind power for the event, the wind installation should be set up several weeks before the event, allowing time for the inevitable wind to come and charge up a battery bank.

 

These windmills and solar panels would charge a bank of batteries which in turn would drive inverters to provide AC power. By sizing the system a bit larger than required, we can be assured of adequate power.  Ample storage capacity will assure adequate supply even when the wind does not blow.

This project would include an educational kiosk at the base of the towers to help promote the technology and explain how the project works.

September 2003 update:  ECO-DISCO in its first form came off wonderfully! We at WigTown built out our power system to include another 112 watts peak solar generating capability for a total of 144 peak watts capacity! I also upgraded my 1988 VW Vanagon's sound system with removable subwoofer and speakers. This system uses two amplifiers to pump the sound. We also ran lights at night, but in the interest of saving power, all of the lights we used were solid state such as EL wire or LEDs (100 LED christmas lights which use less than 1% of the power that 100 light incandecent christmas strings use!) We mostly ran the stereo fairly softly as we are in a quiet neighborhood and WigTown and Country alike often had happy nappers in their mylar-protected tents. However the ECO-DISCO really happened the afternoon of the Lingerie Party, although not as I imagined. When cranked up, this solar-powered sound system could kick it nice for a modest party, but the boogie factor was limited by the sound system and not limited by the power supply. However an art car full of lingerie-clad humans pulled up, spilled its lovely contents and cranked their own tunes. Their sound system was superior and gasoline-powered. I felt a little bummed, but I knew this party could go for hours and I just powered down my system, preferring to save my juice for later.  The party was amazing and once I was dancing with my gorgeous pregnant wife and lots of other hotties wearing their nasty naughties, who am I to complain about basking in the petroleum afterglow of a dying world order? Truthfully, I was in good space about it and still am very thankful for that art car driver who made our party get really hot.

 

But then the moment of payoff for the solar sound system came. The art car driver came up to me asked me if this was my party and then asked me if I had any gas.   :)    He was running low.    :)     I smiled and told him our whole system was solar, so we didn't have any gas.     :)     But I thanked him for being so cool and sharing his sound system and asked him to continue as long as he could, and that I would take it from there!     :)   :)   :) 

 

Now for the geeky details you were eagerly awaiting: This three-panel solar array was hooked up to the proper charge controller, fuses, ammeter (to watch to current flow in), voltimeter (to monitor voltage and by inferrance, %charge of the batteries) and of course batteries. The system uses two 130 amp*hour deep cycle marine type batteries. These are connected in parallel to provide a single effective battery. Since batteries like to be matched and share identical charging histories, this bank will have to charge other batteries in the future indirectly or be moved to another array and replaced with a larger battery bank. From the batteries were the loads. I unhooked the van's starter battery to protect it and keep it out of the way. I then just used the same terminals I had just removed to hook up a heavy gauge jumper to the solar-charged battery bank. This allowed full use of the stereo, plus the ability to plug into the cigarette lighter for appliances with cigarette lighter adapter and since I had a power inverter with just such an adapter I was then able to offer two normal 110V AC outlets for whatever else you had to plug in. I charged a couple of cordless power drill batteries, re-charged a couple of cameras, ran those LED light strings and even ran a breast pump for a lactating campmate! The EL wire inverters run off 12V DC so I just ran those from jumper cables off the batteries directly.  Powerwise, with all of the loads I put on the system (every power need the 20 of us at WigTown for a week), the charge on the batteries kept steadily climbing throughout the week, so the system was putting in more than I was taking out and therefore could handle bigger loads.

OILFREE MAN !

This project will consist of the purchase of the equipment necessary to provide the power for The Man from wind and solar sources. Depending on the power requirements, commercial windmills will be purchased along with towers, batteries and inverters to provide the main generating sources. In addition, but optional would be the purchase of several solar panels to insure adequate and diverse supply. A more thorough search for equipment would be done with actual power requirements in consideration.

These windmills and solar panels would charge a bank of batteries which in turn would drive inverters to provide AC power. By sizing the system a bit larger than required, we can be assured of adequate power.

 

This project also could include an educational kiosk at the base of the towers to help promote the technology and explain how the project works.

           

DPW POWER

While from a visibility standpoint this project is somewhat lacking, from a practical view it is a good project. This project would propose the purchase of perhaps one windmill with a peak generating capacity of 1.2KW and 500 watts of solar generating power. A battery bank will provide adequate storage of power to account for times of low generation. Backup gasoline generators (but perhaps fewer than were previously needed) could assure DPW's mission critical needs and would still be used for some remote power needs. The goal of this project would be to greatly reduce the DPW's need for gasoline while demonstrating that camps with larger power requirements can be run with little or no gasoline. A desirable aspect of this project is the long period of time that the DPW camp is on the playa both before and after the event. Of course this generation and storage system would be property of Burning Man.      

Upgrade of work ranch power system

This project would consist of the purchase of the equipment necessary to augment the power generation and storage capacity of the power system located at the Burning Man work ranch. Currently the system may be lacking in solar power generation and adequate storage. For a modest cost this system could be studied and improved. This project could be implemented soon and provide a testbed for the equipment and aid to the design process for any of the possible projects.       

What about after the event?

Several of these proposals request that the Burning Man organization pay much of the capital costs with fundraising to make up the difference, and therefore the equipment will be the property of Burning Man to do as it pleases the rest of the year and in the future. My suggestion would be to install the equipment at the work ranch providing the crew there with year round, petroleum free power. The system would be kept up by the organization and then be used to power whatever project Burning Man endeavors to undertake each year.

 

There will be a day when we drive hydrogen-powered vehicles and have available for rent large fuel cells instead of a diesel generator for Center Camp power. With a ten year investment in solar and windpower equipment it is conceivible that Burning Man could use excess generator capacity to electrolisize available water and store hydrogen in a tank throughout the year. Then this (one or several) tanks could power the City. The possibilities are endless. In less than a decade, ther average Black Rock Citizen may drive their fuel cell SUV to the playa and use their vehicle to power their sound systems, moviehouses, light displays and everything else. The hydrogen revolution is coming, let's lead it!

 

Why do this when it is so simple to just use a gasoline powered generator?

First I would have to mention the cost of petroleum in lives lost, cultures destroyed, and countless other atrocities committed for oil. But more practically from a playa perspective, I offer up noise, oil drips, gas spills, gas fumes, CO2 emissions, and (yes it has been seen) SMOG in Black Rock City. My sense of our culture is that the prohibition of generators is not the solution in our community. In Black Rock, maybe it is best to lead by example. 

           

What about a contingency plan to guarantee power?  What about windmill noise?

As a contingency, should there be no wind and no sun, the batteries could be installed on a trailer to allow them to be taken to Center Camp for charging by the diesel generator. It would also be possible to have a contingency generator which could charge the batteries if wind and sun were lacking. The generator could be smaller as it would not need to power the whole output required, but a lesser power output adequate to charge the battery system. However, since wind and sun are usually in ample supply, the system can be sized to power any of these projects. By sizing the system a bit larger than required, we can be assured of adequate power. By purchasing a larger wingspan windmill, we can maximize efficiency and minimize noise. We can also set windmill generators at an adequate distance from the project to minimize the effect of even this smaller windnoise.                

 

Who will decide how it all looks?

For all of these projects, the power user would be a partner and therefore the goal of these projects is not in any way to control the aesthetic of the power user's project.  In short, this project is 100% concerned with power generation and not really concerned too much about the power user. One caveat would be that it would be mutually beneficial to explore lower power consumption appliances which do not compromise aethetics or function.

 

These projects do all include an element of demonstration, education and display. However, these aspects can be made to be aesthetically pleaseing to the partner project (the power client) and would be flexible to meet the needs of their project.

      

Who will work on this project and see to its completion?

This project will be completed with the cooperation and participation of VOLUNTEERS inspired by the projects and renewable energy use on the playa. Drawing from my experience with similar scale projects, I offer myself as construction manager and design engineer of this project. All of these projects call for other technical experts, Burning Man organization representatives, a press secretary, a minister of information (to survey power use at Black Rock), a fundraising chairperson and financier, and a crew of people to install, operate and dismantle the systems. These projects vary in scope and size, but all of  them are larger than what one person can accomplish alone.