In April 2026, spectators at the Vassar Outing Club’s (VOC) Folk Fest may have noticed two new pieces of equipment amid the usual rock-band set up: a mini-array of portable 1,000 watt solar panels and a battery. Purchased by the Environmental Studies Department, the solar panels helped concert organizers forgo the usual costs of running power cables from nearby buildings. Electrified sunshine powered all the musical equipment for the concert’s five-hour runtime.
When Vassar Research Associate and Adjunct Assistant Professor of Environmental Science Mike Roth and Professor of Physics Jenny Magnes helped purchase the solar equipment during Summer 2025, they did so with the idea of putting solar power in students’ hands. “Professor Magnes and I wanted to have a hands-on tool that is portable for teaching and student projects,” Roth told me.
Important for this educational endeavor, the battery records data regarding its state of charge, charging and discharging rates in real time. Since their purchase, the solar panels have been featured in class curricula, from the application of the photoelectric effect to offering ideas for projects that integrate solar technology in the local community. Roth also uses the panels as part of the Vassar Energy Lab, an upcoming initiative to forefront student-energy projects, archive energy related curricula, and provide technologies like the solar panels for student use and experimentation.
The idea of solar concerts manifested during a planning meeting for the Sun Day event last fall. As part of national-wide celebration of Solar Energy, the Students for Equitable Environmental Decisions (SEED) unveiled the equipment as part of a larger teach-in on solar energy, including its environmental benefits and recently acquired title as the cheapest form of electricity.
The Sun Day concert is where I first became familiar with the equipment. My jazz combo played about 45 minutes of music—all the jazz standards with “sun” in the title—followed by Vassar College Traditional Music.
Roth, a nine-year touring rock musician himself, was eager to lend the equipment for more performances. At that point, however, we did not know the extent to which the battery could power a full concert. The speaker system for the microphones, for example, was plugged into a power strip that came from a nearby building, while the power for at least one of our amplifiers came from an electric vehicle parked behind the stage.
Moving forward, I wanted to be know whether larger-scale solar concerts were feasible. After the Sun-Day concert, and as part of a class focused on renewable energy, I tested the battery further, to push it to its limits. To do so, I conscripted two guitarists, a keyboard player and one of the loudest drummers I know. We plugged in all our equipment to the battery: the PA system, amplifiers, guitar pedal boards, my bass pedals and a keyboard. After an hour and a half of cranking the volume, the battery’s state of charge only fell to only around 70 percent—and this was without charging the battery while playing. The musical equipment demanded power at a rate far below the battery’s maximum rating of 1,000 watts.
I shared this information with the organizers of the Folk Fest, who ultimately decided to use the solar equipment, particularly because of the lower power demand of most of the acts, especially compared to what I had tested. Five hours of music only drained the battery’s total charge by around nine percent. VOC Co-President Cormac Minarovich ’26 never needed to readjust the panels’ position as the sun moved across the sky. If the solar panels were positioned at their optimal angle, Minarovich guessed that the battery could have retained even more of its charge.
With this track record, there is little reason why outdoor events needing power should not default to using the sun. With the exception of Vassar College Entertainment (ViCE) concerts and Founder’s Day, there are few outdoor events longer and more energy- intensive than Folk Fest.
The panels also save money for House Teams and student organizations. As it stands, the Student Activities Center (SARC) charges groups $50 for an electrician to help run cables for outdoor events that need power. Though not a large sum on its own, forgoing this charge gives event organizers a little extra cash for food and other supplies. On this note, Ravin Dhumale-Smyth 27, treasurer for the often cash-strapped Vassar Student’s Musician Union (StuMu), showed enthusiasm for the battery.
Moreover, the solar panels open up more of the campus for outdoor musical events. Picture a little band setting up shop, off-the-grid, on those sunny days where many of us like to bask on the quad. Better yet, a concert by Sunset Lake, preferably at sunset. The battery, even without the panels, likely has enough charge for an evening show.
Mainstream discourse frames solar energy mainly in response to global warming. Regarding the music industry at large, multi-day outdoor music festivals are the older siblings to events like Folk Fest. They are notoriously power intensive, with the sudden influx of power demand often straining local electric grids. As a result, concert organizers routinely have their own generators, usually burning natural gas. Some events, however, began supplementing their energy demand with renewable energy. The Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival, for example, recently installed a solar array that covers 20 percent of the festival’s electricity demand.
Obviously, solar concerts are not the main way Vassar will decarbonize. As documented by SEED, most of Vassar’s greenhouse gas emissions come from our on-campus heating and cooling plant, which burns natural gas. Decarbonizing our heating and cooling system, mainly through a scheme of ground source heat pumps, is the primary way we can put a dent in that statistic. As a wealthy private institution, we owe it not only to the world at large, but also to our community in the Hudson Valley. In New York State, Poughkeepsie ranks number one in asthma prevalence, a statistic driven by the pollution of its air.
Nevertheless, solar concerts can still play a role in making our campus’ energy consumption more sustainable. The high visibility of solar panels is good for advertising the technology, perhaps building enthusiasm for larger investments by Vassar. By making solar a regular sight, we can help to change the common perception of renewables as merely alternative energy. More than just a vanity project, I think that solar concerts may help embody some of the multiplicity in a world of renewables, where the onus of power generation would increasingly rest on a diverse mix of technologies, where the management of such systems relies on more than just large scale utilities and fossil fuel monopolies. Solar panels give me the power, pun intended.
Whatever we can theorize about the symbolic effects of solar concerts, the sun battery seems here to stay, nonetheless. Since Folk Fest, it has powered SEED’s Earth Day celebration, and on the same day, the Cushing Carnival. Minorovach expressed that StuMu and the VOC’s Fall Fest, another historically sunny occasion, is looking increasingly solar powered, as are many of my own musical pet projects in the coming year. So, for songs and sunshine bouquets, stay tuned.