Decarbonizing off grid events

Stronger awareness resulting from the health crisis and the necessary fight against climate change, economic and political challenges... The number of initiatives to offer "low carbon" events are multiplying in all sectors. Concerts, festivals or sporting events make it a statement and aim to decarbonize while offering a friendly moment to the participants. If preferring recyclable waste, setting up awareness-raising actions, and promoting circular economy and local and seasonal food are not to be dismissed, the producers of such events are more and more concerned about the reduction of the impact of electricity consumption of various off-grid structures, such as sound, lighting and technical devices, and increasingly wish to avoid the use of traditional diesel generators. And rightly so !

EODev's GEH₂® electro-hydrogen power generator, which produces electricity as close as possible to network support needs, or quite simply when there is no grid, is an ideal solution to solve these problems. The production companies in charge of these events can thus benefit from electricity produced without CO₂ emissions, fine particles or Nox, without odors and with little noise; key features that are especially important for the good of the surrounding ecosystem — since such events are often located on natural sites — but also for the well-being of festival-goers, sportsmen, musicians and the audiences.

Thanks to its fuel cell, coupled with a 44kWh buffer battery to manage power peak demands, the 100kVa GEH₂® operating exclusively on hydrogen can thus be used to replace diesel power generators for many event applications: the electrification of a fan zone, food trucks, the supply of electricity for sound, lighting and technical equipment. Several event producers have already tested it on location in France, some having even repeated the experience by broadening the spectrum of needs. An additional benefit, the GEH₂® adapts to the needs, as it is possible to parallelize several units to be able to supply power up to 1MVa.

In this context, we can highlight a few examples of operations carried out in 2022: in sporting events, the 24 hours of Le Mans, the Formula 1 GP at Le Castellet and the 10km of Paris, with a GEH₂® set up Place de la Concorde ; for music events, the Inversion festival in Lyon and the Heavent fair in Cannes (managed by GL Events); and, in the marine sector, the Energy Boat Challenge in Monaco, the Saint-Tropez stage of Sail GP, and the start (in November 2022) of the Route du Rhum in Saint Malo, the Brittany town where the Energy Observer project was born. The GEH₂® was also used to power temporary 5G antennas at the Longchamp racecourse to increase Bouygues Telecom's network coverage during the Rolling Stones concert, and the Lollapalooza Paris and Solidays festivals in July 2022 (see article dedicated to BTrucks 5G).

At the time of writing, experiments are also underway abroad, particularly in the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom, and projects to use the GEH₂® for other large scale events are planned elsewhere in Europe. The opportunity to send loud and clear messages to many audiences who often forget that, until now, electricity supplied off the grid has always come exclusively from the combustion of fossil fuels, mainly hydrocarbons.