I saved the best festival wrap-up for last. SolFest is a one of a kind event in Nor Cal, featuring music and entertainment alongside hands-on learning.

The whole thing goes down in Hopland, at the Real Goods Solar Living Institute. It is an amazing campus, dedicated to a fully sustainable lifestyle. The premise of the event is one of teaching and learning. This isn’t just a hippie dance fest, it’s a place to gather knowledge from people on the bleeding edge of ecology. Speakers this year included Paul Staments, Caroline Casey and Ed Begley Jr, and preformers included New Monsoon and Maria Muldar.

But the focus at Sol Fest is always on the participatory workshops. Just reading the titles of these examples inspires me: Carbon Sequestration and Soil Managment; Convert Your Motorcycle to Electric; Reconnect to the Water Cycle with Greywater, Rainwater and Composting Toilets; Introduction to Micro-Inverters; and Community Based Farming- A Path to Creating a Viable Local Food System. Those are a small sampling of the 75+ workshops that are offered.

Here is a quickie Q&A with GH business manager Luc:

Q: Sol Fest happens right between Reggae Rising and Earthdance. How is Sol Fest different from those festivals?

A: The only commonality between these festivals and Sol Fest is that they are local. At Sol Fest, the musical scene clearly comes second; the priority is clearly given to educate on sustainability via numerous quality workshops but also companies that show how their business makes a difference in the renewable energy world. In other words Sol Fest tends to reflect the integrated sustainable solution available with our technology that could and should make a difference in our economy in the near future.

Q: Sol Fest is all about sustainability. What does GH bring to the table?

A: To start with, GH brings hydroponics on the table. Hydroponics is the tool for Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA). CEA is more sustainable than the current industrial agriculture economy for the following reasons:

1-There is no interference between our ecosystems and CEA; it means that CEA production doesn’t emit toxic waste to our soils and waters as the current system does. The other way around is also true: via CEA the crop is more protected from diseases and  natural disasters like flooding

2-By using hydroponics technology the use of energy in CEA is more optimized for water and nutrient cycles.

To sum up, using hydroponics gives us the advantage of using fewer resources that do less damage to our environment. It is thus sustainable. In addition to watching the amount of energy we use for the same output and what we do with this energy we need to carefully look at the way we get this energy. This an area where GH makes a difference in the hydroponics world by featuring some high technology systems that run on solar power. Check out our eco grower, rain forest, or power grower ecos.

Q: SolFest is very cutting edge, can you list some emerging technologies that you learned about, perhaps that you had never heard of before?

A: Sol Fest is very cutting edge! The technology they feature is all at the top what we do for every sector of the economy (transportation, food, construction etc.) I haven’t really discovered any technology I hadn’t heard about before but I learned a lot on how to use this technology. A few examples are the workshops that I attended on:
-how to select and set a solar installation in your house
-how to deal with compliance issues for home made waste water systems and wet lands
-how to build a bamboo structure
Photo Credit Thanks: mary jane watson and sunshine curtis