At the Electric Love Festival – one of Europe’s largest electronic music events – power stability and energy quality are critical. With over 180,000 visitors attending across multiple days and seven spectacular stages, the technical demands placed on the electrical infrastructure are immense. The main stage alone features massive LED video walls, high-powered moving head fixtures, strobes, lasers, and a multi-megawatt audio system, including bass-heavy subwoofers that draw significant inductive power. Combined, these systems generate a highly unbalanced and reactive power-heavy load profile, with total power consumption for the main stage approaching multiple megawatts during peak performance times.
The customer approached Crestchic to support the stabilisation of this high-demand, reactive power environment. The LED walls, in particular, contributed substantial reactive power, while the audio system, especially the subwoofers, added inductive elements and rapid transient loads.
Stage power demands fluctuate constantly during a music festival due to dynamic lighting cues, bass-heavy audio peaks from subwoofers, varying LED screen content, as well as intermittent use of special effects, cooling and rigging. Together, these factors cause rapid and unpredictable changes in power consumption, making real-time load management essential to ensure stable, efficient, and reliable power delivery to the stage.
Without intervention, this mix would result in a low power factor, poor generator efficiency, and increased risk of overloading the grid connection.
To solve this, we supplied a 3.4 MVA containerised inductive load bank, designed to absorb excess capacitive reactive power and balance the overall system power factor. This load bank helped reduce reactive energy circulating through the network, relieving stress on the generator and preventing upstream power pollution.
The entire system was monitored and controlled via our MC-LC80 controller, with fibre optic communication ensuring reliable, low-latency control even in a festival environment. This allowed real-time load adjustments and seamless integration with the stage’s changing power demands.
Speaking about the event, Marcus Keunecke, Technical Team Leader at Crestchic, commented: “Thanks to this setup, the main stage at Electric Love ran smoothly throughout the event, delivering flawless performance in both audio and visual production. The customer was extremely satisfied, citing improved power quality, generator efficiency, and peace of mind regarding compliance with grid protection standards. Once again, Crestchic’s expertise ensured that, even at an event of this huge scale, we delivered electrical resilience when it mattered most.”
