Rock music will be just a little greener at ASU with a solar powered concert on Wednesday at the Tempe campus, part of the Earth Day celebrations.
Peachcake and Ringleader will perform at Hayden Lawn from noon to 1 p.m.
“Our goal was to get the greenest bands,” said Mustafa Abdelhaq, an aerospace engineering freshman who helped coordinate the event as an intern at Arizona PIRG.
Abdelhaq said the bands support the “green” cause, and the drummer and lead singer of Ringleader are “really green” in their support of the environment.
Almost all of the bands’ equipment that uses electricity will be hooked up to a solar-powered generator, he said.
“Everything, like the speakers, will be using solar generated electricity,” Abdelhaq said.
Kimberly Pearson, a sustainability freshman who also interns with Arizona PIRG, said Peachcake and Ringleader were chosen because of the importance they place on the environment.
“Peachcake was chosen because they care about the environment and promote responsibility in terms of ecology,” Pearson said. “They want to motivate people to become aware of their surroundings and be a part of the movement toward sustainability, especially young people.”
She added that Ringleader has done events with the School of Sustainability.
Students of Arizona Network for Sustainability, Undergraduate Student Government’s Green Team, Rad Recyling, and the Global Institute of Sustainability have also helped organize Earth Day events.
ETA Engineering and Dependable Solar Products, Inc., an affiliate of ETA Engineering, donated the solar-panel trailer for the concert.
Leah Bushman, a sales consultant for Dependable Solar Products, Inc., said the solar panels, or modules, collect energy from the sun through an inverter, which converts energy from a direct current into an alternating current.
“[The solar panels are] equivalent to a generator, but in this case it’s using a renewable resource,” Bushman said.
That renewable resource is the sun.
“It’s a great way of showing people that solar power can be used in multiple ways — like powering a concert,” Bushman said.
She said that there will be 10 208-watt solar panels on the trailer and they will be capable of producing 10 kilowatt hours of energy per day, fueled solely by the sun.
Bushman said donating the trailer to the concert at ASU is “part of [ETA] giving back to the community.”
In the past, the solar panels were used to generate power for a concert at the Hard Rock Cafe, she said.
Heather McFelea, a graduate student in the School of Materials, helped coordinate the events, including the concert, as the president of Students of Arizona Network for Sustainability.
“For the past two months [Arizona PIRG and SANS] have been meeting every Wednesday,” McFelea said.
She said the Earth Day event will include speakers, including state Reps. Ed Ableser and David Schapira, as well as Bonny Bentzin, the manager of campus sustainability practices and the director of sustainability business practices at the Global Institute of Sustainability and Brendan O’Kelly, the newly elected president of USG.
“It’s a good mix of education and entertainment,” Mcfelea said.
Reach the reporter at reweaver@asu.edu.
