Virginia Clean Cities hosted a special event in Harrisonburg on Wednesday as the Solar Butterfly made a stop in the Friendly City.
The Solar Butterfly is a trailer equipped with 24 square meters of solar panels on its roof and an additional 60 square meters of solar panels that it travels with to collect solar energy and charge the Tesla that pulls it. A single charge takes around six to seven hours and allows the vehicle to travel around 130 miles.
The Solar Butterfly was built in Europe and its crew have been touring the world in it to showcase the power of solar energy.
“We’ve been doing this across Europe all of last year. We traveled up to the North Cape, down to Spain, and to Greece and every country in between,” said Kai Hicks, one of the Solar Butterfly’s crew.
Two months ago the trailer was sailed across the Atlantic Ocean and now its crew is now traveling across North America. Along the journey the Butterfly’s crew is making stops to teach about renewable energy and search for other solutions to combat climate change.
“We have two missions. First we want to show the people what’s possible with solar energy, hey listen we can travel the world on solar energy the energy is all over the place you just need to pluck it from the sky basically. Secondly we want to find pioneers all around the world. People who have developed new kinds of technology that don’t rely on fossil power. We are looking for these people and our goal is to find 1,000 solutions against global warming,” said Hicks.
The Solar Butterfly will continue traveling across the U.S. and will eventually head even further South with a goal of making it to Panama City, Panama by Christmas.
“Be aware of what solar power is capable of. If you have it in your house you’re mostly independent of the grid and you can save a lot of money. We’re traveling the world with solar energy so if we can do it just imagine what’s possible with some solar panels on your house,” said Hicks.
