Every year we try to tell the story of the brands that get involved and support our event. But we realized that until today we haven't told you how we became the only festival in Romania 100% powered by renewable energy and why this is important to us.
Victron Energy are, without a doubt, market leaders in Europe in terms of the quality of the photovoltaic products and systems they produce for residential and industrial. What many people don't know is that in 1973, the company started out with the idea of producing inverters and chargers for the marine industry, such as sailboats. These are nothing more and nothing less than aquatic campers.
Fast forward to 2022 when at the first edition of CamperVan Fest, the Darcom Energy team, importers of Victron Energy in Romania, proposed to use a photovoltaic trailer to power the central area. For those who didn't catch the CVF22 edition, it's a good moment to mention that during the festival it was almost continuously polluted, with small pauses so that the solar panels could feel that they didn't come for nothing. But there was no way we could declare zero energy because we had to get a generator to keep everything running. But it was a hybrid festival and a great start to a collaboration, started at the worst possible time.
CVF23 was ALTFEL. We consulted in advance, we estimated our consumption and the Victron team asked us: "How about installing a photovoltaic park on site?". Naturally, what could we say except a big YES. In addition to the 15kw array mounted, we had another 15kw on the PV trailer and with a third orientation on one of the Darcom Sprinterers. All this energy went daily into an 80kWh LiFePO4 LiFePO4 battery bank with a three-phase system with Quattro inverters that provided lights for the festival, power for the vendors, charging of the electric cars at the organization and electricity for the "site organization". At the end of CVF23, when we looked on the VRM to see what Cerbo was telling us, over 500kWh was produced and consumed, 100% renewables.
The effort to build the infrastructure for a sustainable festival is not small. It took 4 days to assemble - disassemble, and the tireless Victron Energy + Darcom Energy team always made sure that everything worked perfectly. CVF24 will be a new exercise in energy independence that we are putting in place, in our ongoing quest to run an increasingly sustainable festival!
If you haven't managed to get your CVF24 tickets, this is a great time. It takes 10 seconds and between August 15 and 18, in Râșnov, you can see the photovoltaic awesomeness that powers our festival and participate in workshops or Victron Energy raffles!