Deployment Date: March 2026
Project Location: Indio, California, U.S.A.
3 min read
Festival season is back. As outdoor events return, energy has emerged as one of the industry’s biggest challenges — a significant expense and source of emissions that can’t be overlooked.
Goldenvoice, the Los Angeles-based division of AEG Presents and the organizer of Coachella, decided this year would be different.
A Better Way to Power Staff Camping
Goldenvoice partnered with Overdrive Energy Solutions — a Leyden Power partner — to deploy NAVY CUBE 250, a containerized battery-energy-storage-system (BESS). Developed in the most demanding environments, this system powered the southeast staff camping for 6 weeks without interruption, maintenance-free.
With temperatures in the Southern California Desert reaching 108°F / 42.2°C, reliable power for staff showers & air-conditioned living quarters was an absolute necessity. While the familiar and widely available diesel generators have been the default answer for decades, they are loud, increasingly expensive to operate, and prone to breakdowns. Operators have been seeking alternatives, knowing reliability was paramount and fuel costs unpredictable.
The NAVY CUBE was built for exactly these conditions. Its dual-input architecture delivers a consistent, stable output and redundancy during grid fluctuations, ensuring operations hold steady no matter what the supply is doing.
Replacing two 156 kVA diesel generators with a single containerized unit delivers a more efficient installation and zero on-site emissions with increased operational reliability. It gives operators the flexibility to avoid peak tariff charges, decoupling energy consumption from the highest-cost periods on the grid.
There are also advantages particularly relevant to outdoor events. Situations with highly variable, peak driven loads increase diesel generators’ vulnerability to breakdowns. By contrast, battery-based systems can operate efficiently across a much wider range of loads, and feature “surge” capabilities to absorb large peaks easily.
Over the course of the deployment, the NAVY CUBE delivered more than 38 MWh of energy without any downtime, with a 90% reduction in cost and a 60% drop in carbon emissions compared to a diesel-only setup.
Battery energy storage is no longer an emerging alternative. It is becoming a core component of modern power infrastructure, enabling operations to remain adaptable and resilient as energy demand grows and the transition to cleaner sources accelerates.
Across the U.S., aging grid infrastructure and increasingly frequent extreme weather events are further challenging diesel power. NAVY CUBE gives operators a way to improve resilience, reduce fuel dependence, and control costs without waiting for permanent infrastructure upgrades.
Coachella 2026 is one proof point. The same logic applies across construction sites, logistics operations, remote infrastructure, and any environment where power reliability and cost control are operational priorities.
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Thank you to Overdrive Energy Solutions and Goldenvoice for making this happen!
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