By Hailey McConnell
Solar-powered charging benches, a new sustainable clean energy source, have been installed at Cal State Monterey Bay to start the spring semester.
These new installations can be found at three locations on campus, two of which are outside the Otter Student Union and the third can be found behind the Tanimura & Antle Family Memorial Library. The benches provide energy through eight charging ports containing a mix of wireless chargers and sockets compatible with USB-C and lightning cables. The overhead solar panels connected to the benches power the ports.
News of the initiative was posted to Instagram on Jan. 14 and was met with enthusiastic responses. “Looks awesome! I’m definitely going to forget my phone there someday. Still awesome though,” commented @glennsta.
These benches were brought to campus through a partnership between CSUMB’s Safety, Risk, and Sustainability (SRS) Office and BlueBolt – a media company founded in 2023 that provides solar powered charging benches to college campuses and certain retail locations. Their goal is to create a functional product that provides clean energy, while captivating audiences with advertising; as they are a division of Blue Outdoor, a company that sells outdoor advertisements.
“Last winter the company [BlueBolt] put on a presentation for all the CSU campuses about the benches and I found out, attended it then soon after was reached out to by the campus planning team to see if this was something the campus would enjoy,” said Derek Martin, SRS associate director, “It has been in planning since January.”
BlueBolt provides the benches and installation at no charge. The company makes money by selling advertising space on the bench. While CSUMB currently has advertisements on the benches, the space is available to any third party buyers and can be bought through BlueBolt at varying prices depending on the time of the year and terms in agreement. However, there is a standard installation fee of $185 per print and will stay up for a minimum of four weeks.
“In addition to that [product being free] we also get a percentage of that ad revenue so it will come back to the sustainability office to then buy things, put on events, fund projects, all that kind of stuff on campus,” said Martin. “So this is not only an infrastructure project but also a fundraising project, it does a lot in one product.”
Bringing these benches to campus offers more accessible sustainability options to students. While 15% of the campus’s energy comes from solar power, it is not an advertised fact. Now students not only are seeing solar panels but interacting with them.
As Martin says, “one of the most important things is that, I want people walking around campus and feeling like this is a sustainable campus.”