Damien Hirst Goes Solar
by Bonnie Alter, London 
on 11.19.07
Damien Hirst, enfant terrible of the YBA (young british artists) trendy art scene and multi-millionaire, is going solar in a big way. He has just ordered the country's second largest solar panel system. To make the studios at his palatial country home in Gloucestershire solar, he will be spending up to £1.5M on a 310kw solar power system. These panels will generate enough electricity to power up to 150 houses and will be spread over 1,800 sq.m. which will include the warehouses where he stores his work and other pieces in his vast art collection. This system is so large that it will account for almost 2% of the country's solar power. It's not clear whether it will feed back into the national grid.
David Beckham has bought his picture of preserved butterflies. Famous for his preserved shark (pictured) and the diamond-studded skull, sold for £100M to an Arab sheik, Hirst is a new addition to the celebrity stable of green supporters. As Friends of the Earth representative said: "This is great news. Good on Damien Hirst... However, we can't rely on the environmentally aware wealthy to nurture the low carbon industries. We need a feed-in tariff scheme which would reward all businesses and individuals who invest in small-scale renewable technologies." :: Guardian
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you missed the "K". I assume its a 310"k"w system.
Hmmmm...maybe Damien could start making Solar Art? Solar panels that are shaped like animals or skulls or something, and billionaires will clamor to buy them and put them up, and it will all of a sudden be the new thing. If it was popular, all the rich people would be taken totally off the grid, and that's a lot of power!
This is great news, once one of the rich and powerful do it they will all want in on it...
I seen the guy from Dallas (that mince that used to be on when I was a young thing) done a similar project.
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I will sell people a 310 Watt PV system for $3M USD and keep the extra $2.999M. For being such a bright artist, he sure is stupid to piss away almost 3 Million USD on a 310 Watt system.
(Obviously, they forgot several orders of magnitude,)
I'm just pumped about the shark.