If you were in Oakland, Calif., on August 26, you may have caught an encore performance by the award-winning Rev. Ray and the Everlasting Incentives, the Inovateus band made up of the people (like me, the keyboard player) whose day job is to “build a brilliant tomorrow” through developing, deploying and supplying solar—but also through music and service.
By playing at the New Dawn 2016 party (hosted by Powerhouse), Inovateus checked all three boxes–spreading music, supporting the solar community, and networking with the solar entrepreneurs who are building a brilliant tomorrow through new clean energy innovations.
Cofounded by Danny Kennedy and Emily Kirsch, Powerhouse is the world’s only incubator-accelerator dedicated to solar. At its Oakland offices, software, hardware and finance entrepreneurs develop new products and services to help accelerate solar adoption and reduce the hard and soft costs of going solar. Solar Mosaic, Powerhive, PV Complete and Utility API are a few of the companies that have their origins at Powerhouse and continue to help solar installers and end-users.
Powerhouse traditionally invites the winner of the annual Solar Battle of the Bands to plug in for an encore performance at the annual New Dawn party, which is attended by hundreds of local solar and music fans. South Bend may be a bit of a hike from Oakland, but we realized that supporting start-ups and organizations like Powerhouse is an integral part of our solar community outreach, so we packed up the band and headed for the Bay Area.
We’d also like to give a shoutout to our friends at Quick Mount PV, who provided equipment and logistics support for the gig, as well as adding their house band’s musical talents to the event.
“There has never been a better example of Midwest generosity, killer music skills, and solar leadership than there is in Inovateus and their band, Rev. Ray and the Everlasting Incentives,” said Powerhouse’s Kirsch. “They came 2000 miles from Indiana to perform at New Dawn and celebrate solar entrepreneurship. I can’t thank them enough.”
The video below and accompanying photos capture Rev. Ray first set of the show. If you didn’t make it to the New Dawn blowout, we hope you’ll make it to our next Rev. Ray and the Everlasting Incentives gig. Watch this blog or sign up to one of our newsletters to stay in the loop about the band and all thing Inovateus.
By TJ Kanczuzewski, president of Inovateus Solar
