Team Germany's winning SurPlusHome
(Credit: Department of Energy)A high-tech building covered on all sides with solar cells has won an international contest for the best home powered only by the sun.
Team Germany, which also won in 2007, took first place in the Solar Decathlon, beating out teams from Illinois and California.
At a ceremony Friday in Washington, D.C., the Department of Energy announced the winners of the competition, in which student teams designed and built solar homes on the National Mall. For the past week, the homes have been scored on architecture, market viability, and a number of objective measures, such as how much hot water the house can generate.
On the final day, Germany beat out its rivals by getting the highest score in the net metering contest, or the amount of excess electricity the home produced.
Germany's team, from Technische Universitat in Darmstadt, designed a building that not only had solar panels on the roof, but also on the walls, making the potential generation as high as 11,000 watts. The specially designed siding that used thin-film solar cells fitted onto aluminum strips. The solar cells ran all the electrical systems, including the hot water heater, and are capable of generating about twice as much electricity as the house needs.
Underneath the clapboard was a highly insulating material. That was one of a number of techniques, including automated louvers to take in outside air, that home used to increase its energy efficiency and conform to the Passive House low-energy home standard.
The cube-like structure not only allowed for a maximum surface area for solar cells, but also allowed the architects to build a two-story interior, unlike the other entrants. The cost for this sophisticated home was at the high end in the competition, with an estimated price tag in the $650,000 to $850,000 range.
By contrast, the second place team--Team Illinois from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign--made a home on the low end of the price range, estimated at about $250,000.
The Illinois team chose to focus on local architecture and local suppliers for its house. It used reclaimed wood from a family barn and a local grain elevator for the siding and decking. On the inside, it used a new product--structural bamboo beams--made from a fast-regenerating plant.
The designers at Illinois, too, chose to run the house entirely on solar electric panels, rather than have a combination of solar photovoltaics and solar hot water panels for all heating and cooling. The all-electric system allowed it to use highly efficient air-source heat pump. The building was also heavily insulated, getting an estimated R50 by using spray foam, and chose highly efficient appliances inside.
Team California, which was a collaboration between Santa Clara University and the California College of the Arts, came in third place, placing at the top in the communications and architecture categories.
The homes in the competition were limited to 800 square feet but California designed its home to give it a bigger feel by having different zones and a large deck that integrated with the main living space.
The team, which also scored well for home entertainment and appliances, designed a home-automation system that allows home owners to monitor energy usage from a touch-screen display. The same display also allows people to control lighting, the shades, and appliances.
The full scorecard and more photos of the homes can be seen at the Solar Decathlon site.
Cornell University house chose to use three Cor-Ten steel silos to reflect their rural landscape of upstate New York.
(Credit: Martin LaMonica/CNET)WASHINGTON--If you designed a net zero-energy home, would it be a science experiment or something you'd move into as soon as it was done?
At this year's Solar Decathlon student competition, both approaches were on display: high-tech homes that cost well over $700,000 and simpler ones that could be made for as little as $80,000.
The contest pits 20 colleges against each other to build the
Student competitors said the whole point was to show what's possible with existing solar and energy-efficiency products, either from established providers or green-building start-ups. And a look at these 800-square-foot structures shows you the huge variety of possibilities in net zero-energy buildings.
Teams Germany, Spain, and Ontario/BC built sophisticated and relatively expensive homes that used a number of innovative techniques, such as solar cells built into the homes' siding and high-tech heat sinks using "phase-change materials" that retain heat or cold to lower energy use.
Santa Clara University, which came in third in the 2007 competition, teamed up with California College of the Arts, to focus on changing the image of a green home.
"The big idea is that living green is not a compromise. You can have all the amenities of a modern house--you don't need to give up you high-definition TV," said Richard Navarro, an electrical engineering student at Santa Clara University. "If you go into this house, you wouldn't believe that it's just 800 square feet. It feels much bigger."
Many students said they designed buildings that they wanted to see back home. Penn State, for example, used solar collectors that work well with diffuse light and are well suited for their climate. Rice University's Zerow house will be installed as a low-income in Houston and Iowa State designed a home for seniors. The team from the University of Arizona, too, set out to build the "home of the future" tailored for their native state.
IT and building tech
On the technology side, the homes act as a showcase for tried-and-true products but also as test cases for relatively untested green building gear.
Many buildings used well established air-source heat pumps for heating and cooling buildings, which are considered efficient systems. Standard equipment in all these buildings included efficient home appliances and LED lighting, both of which keep the overall electricity demand down. Sensors were put in to automatically turn lighting--or even TVs--on and off.
Some student teams found ways to put cutting-edge products to work. Penn State's solar panels came from California start-up Solyndra, which makes arrays of curved tubes made of thin-film solar cells. Team Illinois worked with a young local company called Lamboo that makes lumber from bamboo--a plant that replenishes quickly. Bamboo is already used for flooring in new buildings, but Lamboo makes structural beams.
Many homes had advanced home-automation control systems, which are widespread in commercial buildings but rarely used in residential buildings. Ohio State, for example, has a system that knows how much power each outlet and appliance in the home is drawing. That data is collected and displayed on a touch screen so people can understand their usage patterns to find ways to be more efficient.
"The touch-screen energy display is not just cool technology. It's also a conservation tool," said Jared Lairmore, a graduate student in architecture at Ohio State.
But for all the focus on high-tech mechanical systems, students clearly also wanted these buildings to be attractive and fit in to their environments, rather than look like a "spaceship," as Kimberly Gould, a civil engineering student at University of Calgary and member of Team Alberta, put it.
A number of buildings used reclaimed materials, including planks from old barns, the core-ten steel used in corn silos, or, in Puerto Rico's case, teak from old wooden benches. Every home had a system to collect rainwater for their gardens, with Team California using a filtering system to clean drain water from the shower and kitchen sink.
"Energy efficiency doesn't mean it's different or not good to look at," said Chad Gallas, a graduate architecture student at the University of Kentucky. "It looks just like a home that could be done anywhere in Kentucky."
After the competition, some homes will be used as test labs or display back home. In the meantime, contestants are hoping to get the most points and share their ideas with the public.
"The way I look at it is we're building a Nascar (race car)," said Mark Taylor, assistant professor of architecture at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "We put everything we could in, but you as the public can take what works for you."
The tentative date for the announcement for the overall winner is Friday, October 16. You can see the current standings here.
The University of Minnesota's house on the National Mall.
(Credit: Martin LaMonica/CNET)
WASHINGTON--Energy Secretary Steven Chu is an accomplished scientist, but he's apparently happy to use low-tech home energy-efficiency tricks, too.
Chu was one of the featured speakers at the opening ceremony of the Solar Decathlon, a
Enenergy Secretary Steven Chu speaks at the opening ceremony of the Solar Decathlon contest on the National Mall on Thursday.
(Credit: Martin LaMonica/CNET)At the ceremony, Chu announced $87 million worth of Department of Energy funding in solar energy, including training for installers and studies on the use of solar in urban areas and the impact on the grid of large amounts of solar electricity.
One of the continuing barriers to solar adoption is that solar-generated electricity is costs more than getting electricity from coal or natural gas before government subsidies. Chu said that prices are falling steadily but more costs need to be wrung out, particularly the cost of installation. Solar electricity for commercial buildings is now about $4 a watt installed and more for residential buildings but once the cost drops below $2 a watt, "magic will happen," Chu said.
Although the focus of the Solar Decathlon is clearly solar energy, Chu noted that energy efficiency is a core goal of the competition.
When he was director of Lawrence Berkeley National Lab researchers concluded that adopting existing technologies--excluding solar--and inventing more would allow new buildings to be 75 percent more efficient than current practices. About 40 percent of the energy in the U.S. goes to buildings, which is about the same percentage around the world, Chu said.
He said that in nearly all the many homes he has lived in, making the houses more energy efficient "became a little hobby of mine." Chu and his wife used to ask to see the energy bills of the previous homeowners and made a game of trying to reduce the bills by 50 percent. Most of the changes are simple and cost hundreds, not thousands of dollars, he said.
"I started doing this long before I knew about climate change. And I have to confess the only reason I was doing that is because I'm fundamentally cheap," he joked.
Chu, who visited the California House on Wednesday and the Cornell University House on Thursday, said some of the things on display are likely to deployed while others probably won't be. "Mostly what you see are young, bright, dedicated people, totally caught up with idea that yes, we can make wonderful homes that eventually will be cost effective," he said.
The homes that are on the National Mall are expensive, with many costing in the neighborhood of $500,000. But they were designed to be transported and many generate more electricity and hot water than they need.
Improvements in building design and technology are making net zero energy homes for new construction feasible. Earlier this week, the Obama administration issued an executive order (PDF) that all new federal buildings built by 2030 needed to be net energy zero.
After Chu spoke, a DOE official announced that there will be the first Solar Decathlon outside the U.S. will be held in June 2010 in Madrid, Spain.
WASHINGTON--After nearly two years of preparation, teams of architecture and engineering students will soon open the doors on a cluster of 20 solar-powered homes on the National Mall.
The teams, from colleges in the U.S., Canada, Puerto Rico, and Europe, are competitors in the Solar Decathlon, a Department of Energy-sponsored contest designed to showcase the potential of solar energy in buildings. Energy Secretary Steven Chu, who took a walk through Team California's house on Wednesday afternoon, is scheduled to speak at the opening ceremony Thursday afternoon. The homes will be open to the public for four days starting on Friday.
On Wednesday, however, students were busy putting the final touches on their 800-square-foot buildings and connecting their solar electric panels to a "microgrid" set up for the event, which feeds excess electricity to the local power grid. After constructing their buildings at home, student teams transport and then reassemble their buildings on the National Mall where they operate on solar power only.
Teams are judged by architects and designers in 10 categories, including lighting design, the market viability of their projects, and architectural design. But the route student and faculty teams have taken to self-sustaining buildings is widely different. Some buildings focus on practicality by using only off-the-shelf materials while others have deliberately pushed the envelope on the technology.
At the high end of the high-tech spectrum are the teams from Ontario/B.C., Spain, and Germany which are using building-integrated photovoltaics, or solar cells attached to the siding of their houses. The clapboards made by the German team, which won the competition in 2007, also use super-insulating material on the indoor-facing side, which students say is 10 times more insulating than traditional insulation.
The team from Penn State, meanwhile, is using specially designed solar collectors that use cylindrical, thin-film cells designed to maximize sun exposure.
At the same time, there is clear movement among some schools to show how green-building technology can be accessible. While many of the homes here cost over $500,000 to build, Rice University says that its prototype Zerow House costs $140,000 to build. With smaller panels, it could be made for $80,000. Like Team Boston, the Rice team has found a buyer for their house after the completion.
From LEDs to barn siding
Electricity-generating clapboards is not the only building technology on display. Most teams are using energy-efficient appliances, LED lighting, and energy monitoring and control systems, such as touch screens which allow people to see energy consumption and control lighting and appliances.
Energy Secretary Steven Chu on Wednesday posed for a photo with the team from California during the Solar Decathlon.
(Credit: Martin LaMonica/CNET)Team California, with students from Santa Clara University and the California College of the Arts, built a building-automation system that allows the house resident to program lighting, windows and shades, and the heating and cooling system. People can program settings from a touch-screen display in the home or from a smartphone, according to students.
A number of teams are using heat pumps, considered an efficient way to heat and cool buildings. The Rice Zerow house configured its heat pump so that there are two separate heating/cooling units, which avoids energy loss in ducts.
Another technology used more this year than two years ago is microinverters, devices that convert the direct current from solar panels to household alternating current. These microinverters, which replace larger dedicated machines, are more expensive but can increase electricity output by 10 percent, according to Martin Zeumer from Team Germany.
On the design side, most of the homes seek to use daylight strategically with large south-facing windows and blinds. Daylight cuts down on the need for artificial lighting and can help increase the amount of heat available from the sun.
Another theme on the architecture side is a conscious choice of materials, such as insulation made from recycled blue jeans or locally sourced material. The University of Illinois team's house, for example, is covered in wood planks reclaimed from a barn on one of the team member's family farm.
The specific designs from the Solar Decathlon are best suited for new construction. But opening up the homes to the public is meant to give people ideas on how to incorporate solar technologies and energy efficiency in the homes.
"In my mind, this is an open-source house," said Roque Sanchez, an engineering student from Rice University. "We're really working for the public so they can see what works. I hope somebody can copy and change what we've done."
Later this week, look for another photo gallery with more details and photos of the homes.
MEDFORD, Mass.--To build a home powered entirely by the sun, students here drew inspiration from Boston neighborhoods rather than the futuristic lifestyle of "The Jetsons."
College students from Tufts University and the Boston Architectural College on Thursday cut the ribbon for the opening of the Curio House, a building that will run entirely on solar energy. It's the New England region's entry into the Solar Decathlon, a U.S. Department of Energy-run event where 20 teams compete for the best solar-home designs.
Student teams, who have spent up to two years preparing, will disassemble their buildings and put them back together on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., in less than three weeks. The homes, which will be open to the public, will compete over 10 days on design, market viability, and other technical aspects.
The winners of the 2007 competition were Germany's Technische Universitat Darmstadt, which produced a home said to cost more than $1 million to make. By contrast, the Boston team's budget has been about $200,000. Its goal is to produce a home that could be sold for about that much as well, although it would likely have fewer solar panels at that price.
To keep costs down, the building uses almost entirely off-the-shelf products available in building-supply stores. The construction techniques, too, are meant to be relatively straight-forward, using a modular and simple design, students said.
"We want to show people on the National Mall that they can do this now, not get excited about something that they can have in five or 10 years," said Matt Thoms, the project director for engineering and photovoltaics at the Curio House and a Tufts student. Other students said they wanted to avoid "gimmicks" that would be built only for the competition.
While most of the building materials can be bought at a Home Depot, the solar panels powering the house are top of the line. There are 28 SunPower photovoltaic panels able to produce 6.4 kilowatts of electricity and five solar thermal panels which will provide hot water and heating.
That's far more than a house this size--800 square feet--would need if it were connected to the grid. But competitors need to operate for 10 days while at the Mall, performing a number of jobs, such as doing 10 loads of laundry and hosting a "movie night" where they show off their in-home entertainment system. Batteries will store energy in case it's cloudy or for night-time use.
Teams will also be judged on how much excess electricity they generate. The overall energy load of the Boston house will probably be about a third of a typical home the same size, as it will be well-insulated (lowering the heating and cooling system load) and it will use energy-efficient appliances and LED (light-emitting diode) lighting.
Community living
The building design was done with an eye toward densely populated communities, rather than only for people who can afford to buy land to live "off the grid," students said. The back porch and front deck both have privacy screens, a feature that would allow for many similar buildings to be placed closely together.
The one-story home itself is small at 800 square feet, meant for a couple or a couple with a young child. Residents will also need to "manage" the home's climate to a certain degree as well: south-facing outdoor blinds need to be adjusted to let in sunlight for lighting and heating. The outdoor blinds, along with a planned pull-down bed, are meant to maximize the indoor living space.
But the home will have high-tech touches and modern conveniences. It's wired with Ethernet and will have a simple energy-monitoring display for the residents using technology developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, according to students.
The competition starts on October 9 in Washington, D.C., when students will start assembling their buildings to prepare for the judges, the media, and public viewings. Although it's not part of the requirements, the Boston team thought about the energy that's needed to put the Curio House together. Instead of hiring a heavy-duty and very polluting crane, the entire house can be assembled with people and forklifts.
In focusing on affordability, the Boston team has already tackled one of the trickier problems of green building adoption. The Curio House may even see people living in it someday: the team has lined up a buyer for the home at a "green community" housing development planned in Cape Cod.
For more technical details on the house, see this photo gallery.
It's about time green architects invaded Second Life.
The organizers of the Solar Decathlon are hosting an event in Second Life on Thursday where people can attend a virtual conference and then get a virtual walk-through of a house designed to be powered entirely by the sun.
The Second Life island hosted by Solar Decathlon/DOE organizers.
(Credit: JimmyJet Fossett)The Solar Decathlon is a competition sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy to build the most compelling house that runs only on sun power.
Last year, 20 universities from different countries competed and showed off their modular homes on the National Mall in Washington D.C. in October. The next competition is in 2009.
As part of the Federal Virtual Worlds Expo, Solar Decathlon Director Richard King will present slides from last year's competition. Then they will teleport to a re-creation of the 2007 Universidad Polytecnica de Madrid Solar Decathlon home.
Even though virtual worlds are the hippest thing to come along to the online world in years, I still haven't ventured into any. Now I may have a reason.
Simulation of complex items, be it a car engine or a house, makes a lot of sense. And it saves a lot of people a trip, to boot.
The Solar Decathlon is using simulation in 'Second Life' to demonstrate green building design.
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