Hirst to install £1.5m solar power system

Hirst to install £1.5m solar power system

Ashley Seager
The Guardian
Monday November 19 2007

Damien Hirst is breathing fresh life into the renewable energy industry by ordering the country's second largest solar power system. Hirst is to spend up to £1.5m on a 310kw solar power system for his studio buildings in Stroud, Gloucestershire.

Only the Cooperative Insurance Society Tower in Manchester has a bigger system. Hirst's solar panels will generate enough electricity to power up to 150 homes, and it is not clear whether it will feed into the national grid.

The panels will spread over some 1,800 square metres and will cover all three of Hirst's warehouses, one of which is his formaldehyde studio, presumably where his famous preserved shark was prepared.

Hirst's agents were unavailable to comment, but sources said various companies had tendered for the huge project.

Such is the small scale of solar photovoltaic (PV) deployment in Britain that Hirst's system will account for around 2% of the total 12 megawatt peak capacity in Britain. Germany has 200 times as much.

Environmentalists were cheered by the news. Dave Timms, economics campaigner at Friends of the Earth, said: "This is great news. Good on Damien Hirst. He'll probably do more to boost confidence in the UK solar industry than the government has over the past few years.

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