Octopus brought renewable energy to the party at Timber Festival

The relaxing of covid restrictions has brought many things, and something to certainly celebrate has been the return of festivals. This summer Octopus went along to Timber festival- a glorious three days of celebration, debate and reflection in the heart of the National Forest - and brought some renewable assets with us. The festival takes place in Feanedock, an area of reforested land which shows the success of the National Forest’s bold environmental project.

In partnership with our dear friends at GivEnergy, we erected a dozen solar panels on site at Timber and used them to charge festival goers’ phones over the three days. A big shout out to our brilliant field sales team who held the fort, looking after hundreds of cables and phones. Our very own tech evangelist, Phil Steele even custom built a bicycle powered energy generator for audience members to have a go at creating their own electricity.

One of the reasons we wanted to trial bringing our own renewable power as part of our partnership with Timber is because the festival industry as a whole has been notoriously difficult to run on renewable energy. Festivals often take place in large open spaces which are great for dancing but not so great for grid connections. The ‘pop up’ nature of festivals in lush secluded fields and expansive rolling hills means that they are often also in energy deserts. What’s more, a festival organiser’s worst nightmare is the power cutting out during their Saturday night headliner, so a move away from reliable diesel generators has many challenges.

But change is afoot and growing awareness of the unfolding climate emergency has been reflected in recent years in the outdoor events community. More than 100 organisations are committed environmental action through Vision:2025, which aims to achieve a 50% reduction in outdoor event-related greenhouse gas emissions by that year.

The highest priorities for action continue to be tackling waste, energy use, and audience travel but an industry survey carried out annually since 2015 shows significant growth in action to address these areas.

This year our partners at Timber Festival introduced battery storage units to store surplus energy produced by generators – allowing them to turn off generators overnight. They used
PV panels and turbine systems to run some areas of site and achieved an 18% reduction in fuel usage on site, which is fantastic news.

There’s still a long way to go for the industry as a whole but Octopus’ presence at Timber Festival was an important first foray for the organisation and we feel proud to be joining the march for a cleaner, greener way of powering such events.

Would you like to be in the chance with winning 1 x weekend family ticket (2 adults, 2 children) for Timber 2022? Email us to apply!

Ts&Cs -  tickets include festival entry and camping Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights (bring own camping gear). Travel to/from the festival, food/drink, not included. Entrants must be 18+. Prize is non-refundable, non-transferable, non-exchangeable and no cash alternative offered.