Ecorazzi

Larry Hagman, who rocketed to fame as J.R. Ewing in the hit television show Dallas, briefly visited the Hollywood Goes Green conference today and spoke a bit about his passions for renewable energy. While the 76-year-old actor played an oil tycoon on TV, his personal home doesn’t use a drop of it. In fact, it produces enough energy to power a dozen or more average households. Unbelievably, Larry Hagman has the largest residential solar-power system in the United States — a 102.7KW array that produces 150,000 kilowatt-hours per year!

“Anyone that uses electricity in the next ten years will pay a tremendous amount of money for it,” said Hagman — whose annual electric bill for his 46-acre farm plummeted from $37,000 to $13 after his first solar array went online. “I won’t be paying anything!”

Hagman has been heavily involved in Edward Norton and BP’s Solar Neighbor’s Program, having provided six Los Angeles families with 3KW systems at absolutely no cost. He’s also slated to travel to South Africa in 2008 with the Solar Electric Light Fund (SELF) — a nonprofit org dedicated to providing solar electrification and energy self-sufficiency in developing countries.

“I’m dickering with biodiesel, ethanol, hydrogen, electric cars, anything to spur investment in renewable resources,” he says. “We’ve got to do something before we get into an apocalyptic situation. People just don’t understand that when the end of affordable energy comes, it’s going to be chaos. What do we do to prevent that?”

When asked about the thrills of generating his own electricity, Hagman quipped, “It’s not better than sex, but it’s better than a bowl of oatmeal!” Better than Raisins and Spice? I need to get myself a solar array!

Photo: Larry Hagman with his wife Maj at Hollywood Goes Green 2007 | Photo credit: Melissa Rosenberg