Burning Man Live

COREY:

Like Blade Runner vibes.

XTINA:

Like Blade Runner. Yeah. 

Solar Punks, on the other hand, is aiming for a more harmonious relationship with technology where we’re actually learning how to wield that, to live equitably with each other, with the planet. And we think it’s actually really punk in an age where it’s cool to be cynical, to actually be like, no, we don’t want that. Yeah, what is that? Hope. Hope versus despair, really is punk, in our opinion.

STUART:

So you flipped punk. I like that. 

BURNING MAN LIVE

STUART:

Well, hey, invisible friends, welcome back to Burning Man LIVE recording live from the Black Rock Desert from Black Rock City 2026. I am here with Xtina Chu and Corey Johnson of Solar Punks. And we’re going to hear a little bit about their project here and their projects off the playa. So let’s start, let me just start with the question that I think is on everyone’s mind: What’s punk about your operation?

XTINA:

Oh my goodness.

Solar Punks is actually built off of being the flip side of the concept of cyberpunk, which is all about what happens if technology goes awry and we don’t learn how to live in harmony with it. It’s like dystopia and the world on fire.

COREY:

Like Blade Runner vibes.

XTINA:

Like Blade Runner. Yeah. 

Solar Punks, on the other hand, is aiming for a more harmonious relationship with technology where we’re actually learning how to wield that, to live equitably with each other, with the planet. And we think it’s actually really punk in an age where it’s cool to be cynical, to actually be like, no, we don’t want that. Yeah, what is that? Hope. Hope versus despair, really is punk, in our opinion.

STUART:

So you flipped punk. I like that. 

COREY:

We’re just coming in and doing our thing in the solar world. So we’re not like legacy solar people. We think the technology is amazing. It just makes sense. The light bulb’s gone off. And we’re just coming in and doing our, we’re just doing the best we can to proliferate the technology, and to help the Burning Man decarbonization roadmap. I think it’s that simple. you know?

STUART:

Okay.

So let’s back out and tell people about Solar Punks, about the work that you do and why you set this up.

COREY:

Yeah. For sure.

XTINA:

Yeah. I’ll take it. 

So we work in creative spaces in the default world. We’re trying to figure out how to decarbonize our productions where we use a lot of fossil fuels, a lot of big diesel trucks coming through, big, big gennies and more. And we were really inspired by the civic experiment of Burning Man in particular. 

We felt like that was a really fertile playground for us to try to test out new ways of producing these large events. And basically we decided to get curious. We got some batteries, solar panels, inverters, found an electrical engineer, and decided that this would be a great place to test out how to get rid of diesel generators. And we actually came out and built a camp of 50 people. There’s no generators, only these small pro-sumer gear batteries. So everything is very, very DIY, honestly. And we basically use that to put up a whole camp, including air conditioning. And we… It was the hardest project we did. I think we had 80 mile per hour winds. We had three of our tents, like.

COREY:

It was 2022, if anybody remembers.

STUART:

That was a windy year. It was windy and dusty and hot. Yeah. 

COREY:

It was windy.

XTINA:

Yeah. We had bedrock. We couldn’t penetrate. So we didn’t have a shade structure.

But our power never went down. And so that was really fun. We actually had more than enough power to give. So we actually were starting to support like other artists who would come through, their systems weren’t working. So we were able to give out some batteries as well. And that was the start of our community project of Solar Punks, which is we love giving out free, clean energy. We love supporting artists. We love any time that clean energy is used to power gatherings. So we actually took all that gear back to LA and started giving that out for free to the community, using it also for fire disaster relief efforts as well. And then I basically just use the time to kind of figure out how do we advance this and scale this up. And I was just talking earlier about how we thought it was all technical engineering at first. And it’s actually not. It’s technical engineering. It’s cultural engineering. There’s a lot of different types of engineering that go into it to try to figure out how to scale this up. So…

STUART:

And logistics.

XTINA:

Logistics. Yeah.

COREY:

A few of those.

STUART:

You guys brought a lot of gear out this year. Tell me about what your footprint looks like out here in Black Rock City this year.

COREY:

Yeah. So we have. It almost feels like a farm or a ranch or something out here. So we’re out at 2 and K. There’s been a lot of, I think it’s been absolutely fascinating working kind of cross functionally with the org and all of these different entities because energy, it’s so, it’s infrastructure, right? So it’s the things that other things are built on. And I think from an event planning perspective, normally power and energy is one of the last things in the event planning lifecycle. But to do clean energy and because you need to be thinking on loops and over time and it’s a technology versus a fuel. There’s all of these challenges that basically make you advance the energy planning earlier in the cycle. 

So in working with a Burning Man Project, and these kinda large scale batteries that we have, we have to be out there because of the wind patterns and the kind of civic planning, some factors that were navigating out there. And we need to have a nice safe radius to be out there to kind of, because we are taking infrastructure that normally sits in a field for 20 years, and we’re deploying that in a kind of like trailer-ized or like modular, like kind of modular way where it can be dropped in and then taken out. But we’re using really standard stuff like it’s not unique to Burning Man, that’s shipping containers, flatbed trucks, you know, heavy equipment. It’s all the same, it’s all the same guts, but are all the same kind of conveyances and packaging. But with this new technology kind of put inside of it.

STUART:

And how much electricity are you going to be generating this year do you expect?

COREY:

So we’re generating a lot. So it depends. There’s like different ways of looking at it, right? And normally like in terms of the DC generation of the field, which is like the normal headline when you say like a 100 megawatt field. So we’re a 1.1 megawatt DC solar array with about 5.2 megawatt hours of storage, usable hours of storage. So, yeah, we’re powering a bunch of camps and giving our Solar Station offering where we’re hoping to provide a lot of clean energy and advocacy and advancement to the city.

XTINA:

Yeah, we’re targeting here for like 4 to 5 megawatt hours a day that we’re generating roughly, but obviously very dependent on the weather and more, but definitely looking to gift a huge portion of that to Black Rock City. And that’s where we have the solar station aspect of what we’re doing, which is we consider it the clean energy alternative to Hell Station. Shout out to Hell station, by the way. 

STUART:

That is Black Rock City’s gas station for staff, for staff vehicles. Yeah.

XTINA:

Exactly. Exactly. So we wanted to provide just an alternative and just a different way of looking at things. And that’s where we’ll, we’re offering free art car charging. We have off grid solar, level three and level two charging, so DC fast chargers. And then we also have a lot of different charges for different types of art car vehicles like golf cart chargers, e-bikes as well, phones. And we’re open 24/7. And that’s another part of the story here is just that the sun is available 24/7 with the right technology. So anyone can come in at any point. But we are activating Monday through Saturday 3 to 6 p.m. with live DJ’s. We also have a group that’s coming in, some friends of ours, that are part of Solar Punks that are doing an upcycled plastic creation offering. And that’s all powered by the sun, so everyone can do a little takeaway and see the full regenerative loop as well.

STUART:

So electric vehicles can come and see you out at your camp. But you mentioned powering some theme camps. Is there another way to get the, distribute the power out into the rest of the city? Just logistics. I’m just trying to imagine the scale of this thing.

COREY:

No, you do come over and check it out. So our site is about 1500 feet across. I think our farm is about five acres. It’s right outside of 2 and K. So the technology that is the inputs right into the battery and this kind of containerized hub that we have that takes all of this…

STUART:

And like how many panels is that for the home solar user?

COREY:

You’re gonna put me on the spot doing that. But you can, it’s about 1500, 1600 panels, I believe. And they are kind of like large panels as well. So there’s a, it’s a, we kind of view it as like rapid deploy solar. You see kind of like memes or things like online where you have these like fold out things that you kinda see, or whatever.

STUART:

Yeah. Dragonfly wings.

COREY:

Yeah, like that kind of thing. But we saw one… And because our background is in event production, culture, music, when we started, we were like, we wanted, in 2022, we we’re like, we want to do a full theme camp. And we’re like, “How hard could it be?” Just use battery instead of that. So innocent.

STUART:

Oh, innocence, innocence.

COREY:

An innocent idea. Yeah. And we wanted to power big. We wanted to power meaningful cultural beacons, something that you’re like, wow. You’re powering the stage. The music is that… It feels so nice to listen to solar power. It feels nice to be in a camp where there’s no sound. So that was our idea. But then, the downstream of our system, we’re basically using standard kind of ‘four aught’ (4/0) or DLO cable, like the standard diesel generator. So our idea is that on the offtake side, or the people that are plugging into our system, it’s the same; same-same. You don’t really have to think or do anything different than you would normally do it. So, it’s a 480 volt system, which is a little higher than most people would use for their camps, but it enables us to travel a little farther. So we’re running, so we’re running a lot of ‘four aught’ (4/0) cable around the neighborhood for sure.

STUART:

And any of those, the portable batteries that people can take or do you charge any of those are?

COREY:

Absolutely.

XTINA:

Yeah. We are actually supporting a lot of art projects out here as well that I charge it up at Solar Station. And, they’re doing a swapping technique, but we also are popping up some baby microgrids out there as well. On top of that, I think, 4 or 5 honoraria projects. So yeah.

COREY:

I’d say the swapping. So a lot of the equipment we use, even going back to 2022, is still being used and in circulation with quite a few art projects that we’re doing now. And this year we’re not fully promoting like we have even on Playa because we don’t want to get totally because there’s also the operational aspect of this and like, we have good models, but it’s really… You know, we did a real kinda ‘proof of concept’ last year where we got it out here. We kind of established the pathways and got people comfortable. This is really the first year that we’re able to lean in a little bit and we’re all kind of leaning in together and be like, okay, this is an offering. 

But the truth is we have, you know, there’s not, there hasn’t been robust EV charging infrastructure out here. And what has been has been backed by diesel. So to be able to say, you know, we have, we definitely have a couple DC fast chargers, we definitely have a couple L2s. And we have a lot of charging capacity. So I think in future years, there’s a lot of amazing… There’s a great community of other clean energy folks out here. Ryan Martino, Dragon Wings, Ken Rehoar, R.A.T. Like there’s all these different things. So we’re all we view, we’re all kind of serving different niches, and we think that our infrastructure will be able to be like a charging beacon, that we can do more of that swapping and kind of cross collaboration in the future.

STUART:

Yeah, and there’s an organized collaboration: Innovation Labs. Is that what they’re calling it?

XTINA:

With Gremlin’s teams? Yeah. Regeneration. Yeah. We’re so grateful to be in partnership there. Shout out Gremlin. Shout out Steven. And yeah they’ve really helped shepherd and support us in integrating with different tentacles of the community and figuring out how we can make 1+1=3. So they supported us in really getting over the hump, the fear, I think a lot of people have of this technology; helping us get some land that, you know, this is solar does take up quite a bit of real estate, but we do have a lot of real estate out here.

STUART:

Yeah. Last time I checked, a lot of, a lot of playa.

XTINA:

So getting folks comfortable with us building outside of the city and testing out, first on a camp, next on like a hub now. 

COREY:

We’re leaning in with the HUBS program, Humans Uniting for Better Sustainability. So we kind of have this mega hub. It’s like a mega solar hub where we’re all working together And people, it’s just amazing. It feels like people, it feels like the playa wants it. It feels like the community wants it. And it’s more like just how do we work together? And there’s certainly all kinds of different challenges that we face logistically, operationally, financially, all the different things. But at the end of the day, it feels like the project, there’s a lot, there’s like a bigger force than us that wants the thing to happen.

STUART:

So yeah, I still keep thinking about just hauling gear around. How many containers did you bring, drag out here and are going to take away?

COREY:

The energy system is…

XTINA:

…mostly flat beds actually, yeah, the solar itself.

COREY:

So I think we have five containers on the energy system, and it’s 22 of these solar modules. So it’s yeah, it’s a good amount. It’s a good amount of infrastructure.

STUART:

And how much diesel do you burn bringing it up here and back?

XTINA:

We don’t know yet. And obviously we’re on a crossfade at the moment. The goal is to move towards a fully electric system, but we’re excited to be prototyping and innovating to get there together.

STUART:

Yeah. And when you take it away, you store it back in LA and you use it for?

COREY:

So we’re setting up in Reno. So all the equipment is going to live in where we really view that as a burgeoning cultural community and something that we want to be a part of. And we in the same way that the resources that we, you know, took an early risk on, I guess, in 2022, those are continuing to provide value kind of downstream from that. We view these resources in the same way. 

There is this very ambitious kind of decarbonization roadmap, the 2030 Roadmap is there. And, you know, events are anything we do, you know, you get up, you walk around, you eat food. There’s an impact of any activity that you take. But I think as people that have made our life and our passion creating these shared events, spectacles, community coming together, how do we still engage in that celebratory aspect? How do we do that, but in a way that we’re advancing something for ourselves, something that we can feel grounded, something that we can feel like when we started, it was like we wanted to go more deep into the civic experiment that is Burning Man. 

So an important part, as we’ve thought about, like how to basically, how to contribute and how to support this roadmap, using that equipment beyond the playa is also going to be an important piece. And it’s very clear as well that this is a multiyear project. We don’t have everything figured out, and we’re just doing the best we can every year. And as more people and more, we get more information, more insight, more data. You know, we deployed as much solar in day one of our build this year than we did entirely in a week last year. So we set up the whole grid in less than a week.

XTINA:

The idea definitely is to be deploying this infrastructure as much as possible. There’s so many use cases beyond just the festival site. It works well for construction, for disaster relief, other gatherings, broadcasts… It’s just a great tool. And I think the aspect that we’re really tackling is how do we deploy large scale renewable energy very quickly, and like, paint a picture, you know. In 2022 it took us about 12 people over three days to put up 50 kilowatts. Now once everything’s site marked, with just three people on a forklift, we can deploy the same amount of energy now in about 20 minutes. 

STUART: 

Wow.

XTINA:

It’s crazy. The technological curves.

COREY:

Even while we were out here, we were doing like an hour, and then the next day we were doing 30 minutes, and the next day we were doing 20 minutes. So it’s like the level of learning and just taking those reps and having more and more kind of like qualified people come around and starting to establish our kinda larger group movement, the efficiencies are radically increasing. And things like electric trucking are definitely within reach, you know.

But even right now, like we had people rolling into our camp with 3% power driving an EV and we’re like, “What was… What was your plan like? How did you like..? How were you thinking to get out of here?!” So we gotta get charging on this side because I don’t know if you’ve looked on PlugShare or whatever, but there is not much out here right now in terms of… Even if you get an EV truck or an EV car out here, you gotta…

STUART:

It’s a one way trip.

COREY:

It’s a one way trip. Yeah. We gotta go back!

STUART:

So Xtina, you mentioned disaster relief. I understand you folks were active in the Los Angeles fires. Tell me a little bit about that.

XTINA:

Yeah, absolutely. Actually, we saw what was happening in LA. We ourselves are from LA. And we knew we were sitting on all these resources, and started hearing requests for power, especially for different communities, for the LAFD as well. So we got involved. And we also collaborate with our friends with Footprint Project, also affiliated with Burning Man.

STUART:

Yeah, we’ve had them on the show before. 

COREY:

Oh yeah? We love them. Doing so good.

XTINA:

They’re more focused in different parts of the US, so we, they  actually leaned on us a lot to be a tentacle for them out also in Los Angeles, and to meet a lot of the demand out there. 

So we had our batteries. We gave them out to different disaster relief centers for families to pick up, and we trained them on how to use it. And we also worked with different communities, like the Zorthian Ranch, if you’re familiar with that outpost, it’s a commune of artists out on the east side. And their whole ranch burned down, and they were about to almost be kicked out of their property. But by keeping the power on in their main domicile, they’re able to retain that, and not have, you know, some PE from come and kick them off, essentially. Yeah. And they actually have that system going right now. 

And so yeah, it was really great to be able to work with the city and also share a lot of our learnings too with different folks that are part of different governmental organizations, but also clean energy startups that are trying to think about: “So when it happens again, what is the plan here?” 

And I think that’s part of a lot of what we’re prototyping out here is: How do we quickly deploy clean energy stations that can help power big mobile batteries that can go into these areas that need power very quickly for communications…

COREY:

All kinds of different things.

XTINA: 

Exactly, for medical needs, etc.

COREY:

We really have to do the hard work of learning to deploy and working through those logistical issues, because it’s like every time you think you solve something, it’s actually like five things that need to be solved underneath it. And it’s just like you just keep going deeper. So we definitely saw, on the disaster relief, it was pretty reactive what was happening. And we happened to have these resources and we kind of like showed up to help. And then all of a sudden we got thrown into the middle. It was very reactive or responsive, let’s say. 

Where, with this technology, with a little bit of planning… We were scrambling to catch up to then turn around systems to get them ready, to then put them out, versus this idea of… We think very similarly then Footprint Project in that way, with this idea of resilience hubs and having these assets organized, and…

STUART:

pre-positioned

COREY: pre-positioned, and pre-thought in a way that then they can be dispatched for different needs and opportunities to help with all different parts of kinda the larger consideration.

STUART:

So I’m curious what brought you to Burning Man in the first place? I’d like to hear your backstories of how you went, why and all that.

COREY:

I mean, we each have our own journey with Burning Man.

STUART:

I’d like to hear them both!

COREY:

You want to go first?

XTINA:

Yeah, sure. 

I started participating in small independent festivals outside of Burning Man that were very inspired by Burning Man. And I think I’m hearing more about this huge metropolis is very intriguing. And I was actually talking to, actually, the Robot Heart team because one of the sets was, I think it was like a Swami John Dill set that really inspired me as well. I was just very intrigued by it. And it was a Burn night set. I remember being like, wow, this is powerful. I really want to come and experience this. And through that I found some friends and we came. Our first year, yeah, there was no running water. I definitely lived in a tent, lived off of baby wipes, and made it happen. And it was. But it was so fun. It was amazing out here. 

And it’s actually quite full circle too, because now Robot Heart’s actually linking up with us at Solar Station. And we’re going to charge the art car and do a sunrise set on Tuesday morning. So it’s a very full circle moment for us. That’s something that inspired us now we’re collaborating with and hopefully inspiring others, and also advance clean energy.

COREY:

Yeah, I guess my story, it’s like this place is just like it’s a mecca, you know? I grew up in the Bay Area. I love music, arts, entertainment; I came up doing shows and events. And this is a ‘one of one’ place in the world. I was just a kid. And it was just like, “I gotta go,” and just came out with a few friends and didn’t know anything and just came into open camping, and I got like one of those little PVC domes, and it was super windy. And, you know, it was just two of us, and all that. 

And then, I moved more into event production and got my company going and then came out with someone, the DJ side of things, that was the world that I moved in previously, and had some experiences in that way, which was amazing, you know. 

But, I think it was over the pandemic that we really fell in love, our business worlds got a little disrupted, let’s say. And we had a chance to reflect and go a little more internally and be like, what do we actually want to do? And like, how do we want to show up? And like, we still like the party, we love the spectacle. We love the overwhelm of it all.

STUART:

So I know that prices of equipment have been dropping, but this still looks like a very, very expensive operation. And you guys have created a 501c3, but how do you fund this?

COREY:

It’s a very good question.

XTINA:

No, it is a labor of love. We’ve definitely bootstrapped and funded it primarily initially ourselves, and through that have attracted others that have seen the mission, have heard the story, thanks to the work that you all do, and have come and supported us as well. So this project really is a manifestation of a lot of people pulling resources and skill sets and more to overcome the economic and cultural inertia that’s kept large scale clean energy from being the default or, yeah, the main solution for power in these types of environments. And we definitely see how expensive it is. It doesn’t make sense to capitalize for like a one time one off.

STUART:

Well yeah, that’s what I was thinking. You know, I mean, in previous incarnations of this idea, it would be, you know, we could buy a bunch of solar equipment, but what use is it if it just sits in a yard in Gerlach for 50 weeks of the year, right?

COREY:

It’s very different than, like, traditional event planning because normally events you plan on short, you plan year to year, month to month, that’s how you do it. And as we moved into energy, it became very apparent to us that long term thinking, long term partners, supporters, benefactors, investors was going to be important to what we were building to take a long view on the situation. 

So it’s actually very, even if it’s very hard, very challenging, it’s kind of peaceful because it’s so clear, like geopolitically, economically, like it’s so clear that it’s superior in so many ways. It’s just obvious where it should be, you know? And then it’s so clear how much work there is to do and how early it still is. And I see the people that have been around for ten, 20, 30, 40 years, doing that work to like for us to be standing on. 

And I feel like it’s, as Solar Punks…. Going back to your first question, Solar Punks is bigger… we’re technically a Solar Punks club. We’re not… Solar Punks is a movement, right? Like in the way cyberpunk is a movement. And speaking to hope and optimism as this idea of something that’s counter to like, it’s easy to be a little more dystopian. That’s the mainstream aesthetic. So we view optimism and like going and saying, okay, like we’re out here, we’re going to stand for ourselves. We’re going to take the risk, and we’ve just put ourselves out there. And somehow the right forces just keep showing up at the right time for us. There’s a couple of people out here with this year that like, I don’t know what we would be doing. We would be out there sweating in the dirt right now if we wouldn’t have had a couple of amazing people show up and it’s just the right things. Just keep lining up for us at the right time.

STUART:

So you feel like you’re having a ripple effect out from here, and that as people, more people find out about it, more people are joining up. 

You know, we talked about taking electric vehicles out here before, you know, and coming up with 3% power. I know a lot of people don’t drive their electrics out here because they’re like, “Where the hell am I going to plug it in?” right? 

COREY:

Yeah. So definitely I mean, it’s a bit of a “!f you build it they will come” mentality. And I mean, infrastructure is expensive. 

And you look throughout the history of the country, there’s been massive investments in infrastructure that have catalyzed a lot of the amazing growth that our country has been through historically. And in the same way, Black Rock City, as a kind of microcosm of the larger situation, if we want people… electrification is very clearly a direct, simple response to climate change. And if you want to actually be a part of a solution, it is a very simple, direct action that any person can take to be a part of that. So someone’s got to do it, you know, someone’s got to do this. And we just looked at the situation and we, you know, we thought it was easy; we thought it was going to be an easy situation. And we went for it, you know?

XTINA:

Yeah. I think something that is important to understand. You mentioned it’s expensive. The thing is the clean energy, it’s an expensive upfront that you have to get over, right? But actually if you look at, for example EVs, they basically pay back their carbon manufacturing footprint after like 3 to 5 years of usage. Whereas with diesel-based infrastructure it’s just a forever… There’s a hole in the system. It’s forever draining, like there’s no amount of usage where you’re going to get to carbon neutral. And so that’s where we’re coming at it from, where it’s an expensive swing. But we also know that this type of equipment is going to be around for 20, 25 years. And we definitely plan on using that. And that’s part of the experiment here as well, is figuring out how do we amortize this and do more work off playa to make that make sense, yeah.

COREY:

And I would encourage our invisible friends to… If you haven’t looked into battery recycling and solar panel recycling, it is really happening like today, you know. And there is some amazing information out there. If you go start looking at like what this equipment is, even at the end of its 20 year life, like we could be talking in 15 years and the equipment that’s sitting out here is still having a life. And even beyond that. That’s like the warranty life is 20 years, you know. So we could be sitting out there and at the end of that 20 years, like 99.9% of those materials can be put back into something else. So you just got to like and it just us. It’s like it’s been a massive shift in our own, like thinking and understanding, but we gotta settle in to this conversation a little bit, just getting comfortable with viewing things, and just trusting. And we’re building infrastructure that’s going to be around for a long time; and then helping encourage… You know, like EVs are, the saturation in, you know, America, it’s low. It’s like 3 to 5%. And you look at somewhere like Norway, it’s like 97, 98%. 

It’s a hard time to be optimistic in around these parts, you know. But a lot of great battery and solar manufacturing technology is happening in this part of the United States. 

And I think Burning Man has a unique, it is a one of a kind place to demonstrate and to try things out, and to do the experiment that is Burning Man. And we just feel incredibly grateful and honored, honestly, to be able to be like a part of the experiment and to push this idea for it, of the thing that got us to come out here when we were kids, you know, now to be contributing in a way that hopefully inspires other people to bring their EVs and to learn about electrification and all these things.

STUART:

Let’s follow that trail of optimism into the future. And I love the forward-looking thinking. I mean, where would you like your program to be five years from now? Or even, let’s say, 2030? That was a year that popped up earlier.

XTINA:

We’re really excited about the potential of the solar field proliferating throughout Black Rock City. As we said, established earlier, there’s a lot of real estate. We love the idea of it climbing around the perimeter of the ring, or even within the city, and working with other Burners to use all that gear in the default world in between Burns. There’s a lot of amazing tentacles of Burning Man, including the Burners Without Borders program. They do disaster relief.

STUART:

Nearly 100 official regional events around the world.

XTINA: 

Yeah, exactly. 

COREY:

Incredible stuff.

XTINA:

Tapping into… there’s a lot of different ways people contribute to Burning Man. Some are well resourced with their cultural offerings, and there art, others in other ways that can help capitalize more of this equipment. And we definitely see, I mean, this has already been a microcosm, a lot of different types of Burners coming together, pulling together what they have to once again overcome this economic cultural inertia that we have. I would love to see that continue to scale up.

COREY:

Yes to everything she said. 

And what it brings to mind for me is this idea of, in the Ten Principles, this idea of Radical Self-reliance, which is something that’s always spoke to me a lot; reimagining this idea of self as something larger than… As Americans we’re so individualistic. Me and I need to be reliant, separate from you, separate from you. But this idea of self as like: self as a city. 

And there’s kind of two modes.

There’s kinda like the central, a little more “Radical Self-reliance as a city,” and has a little more centralized planning. So that would be the ring either outside the city or a strip, and then having an actual power grid and power lines. And, you know, people go in and, “Here’s your box,” and you plug into it. That’s one way to think about it. And that is traditionally how power is distributed, you know. That’s why electric utilities are monopolies, because you have to do this huge investment and capital to provide this service. So that’s one modality of the future that I think exists. 

The other modality is more, and I think that it’s not one or the other, it’s both and, which is more like the battery swapping model and having shade structure, this idea of shade that has solar that’s then powering the load underneath it. Because some camps are big and have larger communities that are offering, maybe it makes sense to have that more like large scale power grid, but then also little outposts and little things where there can be an offering, where it’s, here’s your shade and here’s your thing. And you can have a little regenerative loop, you know. If you want to sit out in the middle of the desert by yourself, you can do that too.

And solar, and this technology, offers both approaches.

STUART:

Well, thank you for driving that train. It’s been a great conversation. Thank you. Corey and Xtina for talking to the Burning Man Live folks.

VAV:

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Thanks to Xtina, and Corey, and Stuart, 

Thanks to Danger Ranger and Dusty, 

and thanks to Dustin on this one for helping shoot it and edit it. 

Thanks to everyone from Black Rock Solar to Burning Man’s Off Fossil Fuels Program, Net Zero Black Rock City, and year-round regeneration work. 

Thanks to the builders of EV Mutant Vehicles and fossil-free theme camps.

And thanks to our team: ActionGirl, DJ Toil, kbot, Martini, Mockingbird, and Vavalicious…

And thanks Swordfish for starting all of this.