SOLAR POWERED RADIO: Harnessing the power of the sun 
in new ways…We’ll explain, on Passport to Texas.

This is Passport to Texas

We all know that plants, wildlife and humans depend on 
energy from the sun to survive. TPWD even installed 25 
solar photovoltaic systems at 17 of its own facilities.  

[SFX—radio static] 

But have you ever known a radio station run by the sun?   

05—From the time the voice leaves the microphone until it gets 
to your listening device, it’s solar powered.

Sure, sure…this is off topic for our show, but—c’mon—to 
partner with nature to make radio is super cool. Daryl 
O’Neal is the executive director of Sun Radio, the first and 
largest non-commercial radio network powered by the 
sun. 

14—We started looking around the landscape and noticed that 
all these small little non-commercial radio stations were off the 
air. We started trying to figure out okay well what if we could 
put them back on the air. Would it be a mission in doing that, 
bringing community radio back and what if we could also do it 
and be solar powered.

They are doing it… sending their signal to eleven 
different stations in Central Texas, but it’s not easy.   

24—The real challenge we had is making sure that the solar 
power is consistent, because our equipment is very delicate. So, 
we had to put a lot of electric conditioning equipment in to 
make sure that DC feed that’s coming in is consistent. If you 
add up all of the kilowatts, it’s probably close to 75 to 80 
thousand watts. Enough power on the ground to power the 
equipment in the air to send a signal out.

[MUS Here Comes the Sun] 

A signal that spreads like sunshine across Central Texas. 

For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti. 

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