With those thick clouds in the sky, the Electric Hotel's windmill is surely delivering more energy than the solar panels. Picture: Kerstin Schnatz

„The only possibility to make a festival really climate friendly is to cancel it.“ Sebastian Fleiter’s statement when asked about his role in making the Melt! Festival more climate friendly sounds depressing. Luckily enough, rather than starting a campaign to abandon music festivals altogether, the artist decided to launch the Electric Hotel, a charger station for electronic devices powered by renewable energy.

A small windmill and solar panels on a silver trailer are the main elements of the Hotel that also features a reception where people can drop their mobile phones, cameras or MP3-players to get it charged  for one Euro. An even cheaper solution is the push bike. In return for flexing your muscles on the bike you can charge up to five electric phones at once for free.

Sebastian who has had exhibitions at the world wide renowned Documenta art’s festival in Kassel, had the idea for The Electric Hotel almost two years ago, when he found himself queuing to charge his mobile phone in the sanitary stations at a music festival.

Make a change

Of course flights of international bands and thousands of  fans arriving by car, still emit a lot of CO2. Still Sebastian wanted to make a change: „When people know how much energy they use, they hopefully start thinking about their own consumption.“

The queues in front of the Electric Hotel show, that the Melt! crowd already  loves the concept. Maybe Sebastian will soon have to build even more Electric Hotels for other festivals.

Watch a short video on the Electric hotel on our Facebook-site.