This past weekend I was invited to attend the Outside Lands music festival here in San Francisco as a guest of NRG Energy, the official sustainable energy provider of the Outside Lands festival. Today I’m sharing a few things I learned about this smart energy revolution which has led me to think about how we can better educate our children on green energy. Also, their lounge was incredible at the festival, more about that…

This year NRG powered Eco Lands-a hub of environmental consciousness at the festival. They also created the NRG Eco Lounge, designed to help educate festival goers on renewable energy and solar power, while giving them a space to rest and recharge during the day.  They hosted a daily happy hour (powered by solar brewed beer), hammocks to relax, and had multiple places to charge your phone using your choice of renewable energy. It by far is the best lounge I’ve ever seen at a festival and all made from recycled products.

They also had a beautiful balcony to get the best views of the Twin Peaks stage (where we watched Kendrick play Saturday night).

(Myself and my friend Bri of Design Love Fest who came from LA for the festival)

In addition to promoting and providing solar energy around the whole state, NRG makes a couple of great clean energy products: Goal Zero Portable Power Charger for your phone and Goal Zero Rock Out 2 Solar Speaker. Jared did a bunch of research months ago on finding the best solar phone charger and ended up buying an earlier model of this one. I brought it with me on the canoe trip to Maine and it was a huge life saver! I wish we had that solar speaker for the Maine trip too. We ended up trying to play music on our phones while we canoed but a speaker would have been amazing, especially one charged by the sun.

My friend Mardi from Boston took my other ticket to the festival. We were able to see some favorites like First Aid Kit, Tame Impala, D’Angelo, Kendrick Lamar, Wilco, St Vincent, Mumford and Sons and lots more.

I was really happy to work with a company like NRG Energy trying hard to make big differences in the way we consume energy. It got me thinking  about how we need to teach the next generation to work hard at taking better care of our planet. We actually found a few great resources online that are entertaining and educational for kids like this US Energy Information Administration. It has some great ideas for science experiments, puzzles, field trip in your area, and fun quizzes to test kids’ knowledge of green energy. A great, educational alternative to the usual Angry Birds or Minecraft session on the computer. I’m bookmarking it! I think it would also be really cool to visit a solar, wind or water power plant for a little educational and fun field trip with kids. Any ideas on helping your kids learn about green energy?

It was such an amazing weekend, hoping to make it a yearly tradition since it’s so close to our house.

Big thanks to NRG for inviting us to Outside Lands and sponsoring this post