After: The 6th Street Bridge after high pressure sodium streetlights were replaced with LEDs (See end of post for a before photo).
(Credit: City of Los Angeles/Bureau of Street Lighting)Los Angeles is literally basking in a whole new glow.
The city has decided to replace its street lights and bus stop lighting with LEDs. The bus stop lighting will be solar-powered and off the grid.
LA's Bureau of Street Lighting has been actively testing out different types of energy efficient lighting to replace the public lighting that currently includes a combination of incandescent, mercury vapor, metal halide, and high pressure sodium lights.
In 2009, the agency began an LED street lighting energy efficiency program to actively replace its existing 209,000 streetlights. When complete, the city's energy consumption for public lighting should be cut by 40 percent and save 40,500 tons of carbon emissions per year, according to city statistics.
Now the city has decided on which specific lights to go with. Many of the street lamps will be LEDway streetlights from BetaLED. The solar-powered bus lamps are EverGen lights from Carmanah Technologies. Because the bus lights are self-sufficient, they will not need to be tied into the city's electric grid and will allow the city to remain lit even in the event of a blackout.
In a statement released Tuesday, Carmanah said its lights will also give the city more freedom to replace existing lights or introduce lights in new places without having to dig up sidewalks or tie into electricity poles, cutting down on installation costs.
But in addition to making the city more energy efficient, the switch from an abundance of high pressure sodium lights across the city's highways to LEDs is also drastically changing the city's look. Before and after photos provided by the city of the 6th Street Bridge over the Los Angeles River illustrate a clear change in tint from orange to whiter lighting.
Before: The orange glow of high pressure sodium lights on 6th Street Bridge over the Los Angeles River before they were replaced with LEDs.
(Credit: City of Los Angeles/Bureau of Street Lighting)
Konarka's solar panel on a Neuber mailbag.
(Credit: Neuber)Konarka Technologies announced this week its Power Plastic flexible solar panels are going to be being used in carrier bags and possibly shade structures in the Middle East and Africa.
The company made a deal to supply its solar panels to German-based carrier manufacturer Neuber for bags that can double as chargers for small electronics like cell phones, digital cameras, and media players. Neuber is currently selling the so-called Energy Sun Bags at around 118 euros ($175) on the Neuber Web site.
Konarka's flexible solar panels in Neuber's range of mailbags are not the first instance of backpacks going solar, but they certainly are one of the first we've noticed in the growing trend in recent months of reasonably-priced solar bags coming on to the consumer market.
While not yet at the product stage, Konarka also announced this week it's partnering with Enviromena Power Systems, a solar project developer in the Middle East and North Africa whose clients include Abu Dhabi's planned green community Masdar City.
The plan is to integrate Konarka's flexible solar panels into shade structures.
Shade structures, tents, and awnings are already used ubiquitously for shade. It makes sense to find a double use for them as a solar panels to provide a recharge for cell phones or iPods.
Google PowerMeter software monitors home energy usage in real time and can be accessed from a person's iGoogle home page.
(Credit: Google)U.K. residents will now be able to monitor and regulate their home energy usage from any Web-enabled phone or computer regardless of whether their energy provider uses smart meters.
Google announced two U.K. partnerships this week concerning its PowerMeter software, one of which completely bypasses the need for cooperation from an energy provider.
Since the U.K. electricity and gas supplier First Utility began offering customers free smart meters in September 2008, it has had 30,000 customers take them up on the offer. Now, as a result of a Google partnership announced Tuesday, First Utility smart meter customers will have the option of allowing their info to be relayed to Google's PowerMeter so their smart meter data and control can be Web-accessible. The service will become available to Midlands customers in early November 2009, and eventually extend it to the entire U.K.
Google also announced Wednesday that its PowerMeter software will be compatible with AlertMe, a U.K. self-install energy monitoring system that works regardless of a resident's energy provider or the type of meter installed in the home.
Unlike smart meters, the AlertMe system does not communicate with an electricity utility's smart grid to advise on low-peak usage hours. It consists of a meter reader that clips on to a home's existing electric meter, smart plug adapters for appliances, and a wireless hub that plugs into a home's broadband connection. The hub wirelessly communicates between the meter reader, smart plugs, and AlertMe service.
AlertMe's smart plug, meter reader, and wireless hub.
(Credit: AlertMe)The device's non-evasive nature makes it an option for renters as well as homeowners. And AlertMe is clearly attempting to target that renter market by pointing out in its quirky infomercials (see video below) that its device is unobtrusive. Unlike smart meters, it does require the usual landlord permission to be installed.
The kits costs 69 British pounds ($113) plus a required 12-month contract for its 2.99 pounds-per-month ($4.90) communication service, which requires that the home have broadband access. The total cost, including one free month of service, comes to 101.89 pounds ($167.55).
On Wednesday, the company also announced the start of its trial with British Gas on an AlertMe kit for monitoring and controlling heating from gas that will tie into the gas utility's smart meters. Since AlertMe monitors are now compatible with Google's PowerMeter, the software will be available to British Gas customers who join that smart meter program.
The Google PowerMeter software that ties in to First Utility, AlertMe, and (by default) the British Gas trial program, is currently free. It makes real-time usage data collected from the companies available by cell phone or computer. The data can then be charted in hourly, daily, monthly, and yearly segments for analysis, allowing users to basically conduct their own personal green-living and energy-usage experiments.
A person could test if shutting off their TV and its electronic accouterments for one week, as opposed to leaving them in standby mode, really makes a dent in their home's overall energy consumption. AlertMe subscribers could also use the PowerMeter software to remotely turn specific appliances on or off.
Both AlertMe and First Utility have said they've found their consumers really do tend to adjust their usage habits to save energy and money, once they come face to face with their own usage data.
"At the end of the day, if you can't measure and view your energy use, it's very difficult to make savings," First Utility's CEO Mark Daeche said in a statement.
WALTHAM, Mass.--Green buildings aren't only for well heeled individuals and corporate headquarters. There's an ocean of existing buildings ripe for an efficiency makeover.
Autodesk, a company best known for its AutoCAD three-dimensional design software, has spent the past year developing extensions to its existing products focused on green renovations of existing commercial buildings, company executives said here on Monday.
Last year, Autodesk acquired two companies that had developed analytical tools intended to bring more hard numbers to sustainable design efforts. When used with Autodesk's existing applications, professionals such as architects, designers, and contractors can get a snapshot of how existing buildings perform in terms of energy and water use and can simulate the impact of architectural changes.
A screen shot from Ecotect, an application acquired by Autodesk that allows architects to measure and plan the environmental impact of design decisions. Based on an information model, the application here shows the heat gain inside a building from different sources, such as ventilation and the sun, during different times of the year.
(Credit: Autodesk)The focus on renovation is partly driven by the downturn in the building industry but also a raft of building efficiency mandates coming from national or state governments, said Catherine Palmer, the marketing manager for Architecture, Engineering & Construction solutions at Autodesk.
For example, the federal government earlier this month issued an executive order (click for PDF) that mandates that all new federal buildings built by 2030 need to be net zero energy, or generate as much as they consume. Many of these regulations also apply to renovating existing buildings, Palmer said.
About 40 percent of energy use and greenhouse emissions come from buildings in the U.S. and elsewhere in the world. And about 85 percent of the buildings that existing today will be around in 2050, Palmer said.
Green building retrofits are 5 percent to 9 percent of the commercial building marketplace now but are projected to grow to more than 20 percent in five years, according to a recent report from SmartMarket.
Wanted: good building data
There are a number of examples of commercial buildings that have been retrofit to be more efficient. The Empire State Building, for example, did a $20 million conversion which is expected to lower energy consumption by 38 percent. Autodesk's office here is a LEED-certified Platinum level building. Rather than tear down an existing structure, the company used the shell of existing building and remade the interior with a number of green-building features, such as light sensors, more sustainably produced materials, and the use natural daylight to cut down on artificial lighting.
The challenge with these efficiency retrofit projects is that the tools to analyze the potential savings in energy, water, or materials are slow or inaccurate, according to Autodesk executives. A building owner may compile current energy use in a spreadsheet, for example, which is not connected to the building-management system or design software.
In Autodesk's lobby in Waltham, Mass, the company chose to display a number of projects, including printed three-dimensional models (on top) and a multi-layered map of a city that shows both buildings and underground infrastructure such as subways.
(Credit: Martin LaMonica/CNET)Autodesk now offers two add-on products to its Revit Architecture building-information modeling application to capture existing building data in a 3-D model and then simulate possible changes.
During a demonstration on Monday, Autodesk technical marketing manager Chico Membreno showed how designers and architects can quickly convert photos of an existing building into a 3-D model in Revit.
From there, an application called Ecotect Analysis allows an architect to input various data, such as weather patterns and available daylight, and to see the environmental impact of different design choices. That building model can then be imported into a hosted application, called Green Building Studio, which will tell the user how the building will perform in terms of energy use, carbon emissions, and water.
"A lot of people use rules of thumb," Membreno said. "This empowers the architect and gives them data to back up their design decisions."
For example, a company could use Ecotect analysis to simulate how much electricity could be generated by solar panels or how much daylight is available for internal lighting. Green Building Studio can then analyze how those choice will impact the environmental performance with data such as projected energy costs and water use.
The company has designed its sustainable analysis products for architects and building professionals and contractors working on new construction or renovations. But the tools could also be used to monitor whether green building investments measure up to expectations, which is often not the case. Energy-service companies, for example, need to quantify efficiency improvements to secure financing, said Palmer.
Autodesk executives declined to give a price for the software but a third-party review indicated that Revit Architecture's suggested retail price was about $5,500.
That price and the training required means that individual homeowners are unlikely to use the software. But the commercial market is very large: Autodesk estimates that $400 billion a year will be spend on commercial renovations.
California regional finalists for the Cleantech Open were announced Wednesday.
(Credit:
Cleantech Open)
Think of the Cleantech Open, which started in 2006, as a Western divisions-only March Madness for environmental techies looking for funding. Contestants initially compete against each other in three Western U.S. regions: California, Rocky Mountain, and Pacific Northwest. Since its inception, the contest has garnered more than $125 million in funding for its contestants, according to Cleantech. It's also helped companies like Cool Earth Solar, and GreenVolts get noticed.
This year the California region judges had an initial pool of 278 teams, which it narrowed down to 49 semifinalists who then presented their projects in person. From those semifinalists, six regional finalists were chosen, one for each category of environmental technology that the Cleantech Open focuses on. Those final six, which received $100,000 worth in prizes for their regional win, will now go on to compete against finalists from other regions for the national award in their category.
This year's air, water, and waste category in California was won by Micromidas, a company trying to perfect a process to turn raw sewage into biodegradable plastic products.
Alphabet Energy, a team from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, won the energy efficiency category for a system that produces electricity from waste heat. The group, which twittered a thank you to "the academy" for its win, says its inexpensive method has the potential to offset up to 500 million metric tonnes of carbon dioxide per year.
Tru2earth won the green building category for its Life Cycle Roof Tile made from recycled water and soda bottle plastic that can double as siphons for capturing gray water.
A DIY-installation solar roof panel system from Armageddon Energy, called the SolarClover, won the renewable energy category, while the smart power category was claimed by EcoFactor. The company developed an SaaS platform that "collects, analyzes and acts upon thousands of data points relating to a home's HVAC needs and preferences to help utilities improve demand management and enable consumers to lower energy costs and save money on utility bills without sacrificing comfort or giving up control."
"The Cleantech Open helped Armageddon Energy get off the ground. It brought the founding team together, helped us build our business plan and make crucial business connections. And, by winning the Renewable Energy category, it will undoubtedly help us as a small company gain credibility with crucial customers, supply chain partners, and investors," Armageddon Energy CEO Mark Goldman, said in a statement.
The transportation category was handed to FuelSaver Technologies. The team proposed a modified design for tractor-trailer trucks to minimize drag. The group claims the invention could reduce fuel consumption of a truck by as much as 25 percent depending on certain conditions, and could pay for itself in fuel savings within a year of long-haul driving.
"Our solution is a full body streamlining of the vehicle's aerodynamic profile, minimizing drag at the back of the trailer, underbelly of the trailer, and the gap between the tractor and trailer," the group said in a statement.
Finalists from each region will attend an awards ceremony and gala in San Francisco on November 17.
An updated software tool combines energy-use evaluation with Google's 3D-modeling program to help improve building design in its early stages.
OpenStudio, a free, open-source tool introduced last year, now integrates EnergyPlus building analysis with Google SketchUp, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory announced this week.
"OpenStudio is lauded around our office as one of the most complicated plug-ins ever written for SketchUp," Christopher Cronin, Google's strategist for SketchUp, said in a statement.
While Google may see OpenStudio as a plug-in for SketchUp, OpenStudio's creators may instead see SketchUp as an add-on to its simulation program.
The NREL, which is part of the U.S. Department of Energy, launched the original version of OpenStudio in April 2008. NREL reports an average of 700 OpenStudio downloads per month.
OpenStudio's first version combined a graphical tool with EnergyPlus, a software program for analyzing building energy-use that the DOE began offering in 2001. "EnergyPlus is a standalone simulation program that models whole-building energy consumption from heating, cooling, ventilation, lighting, water systems and other energy flows," according to NREL.
For example, the program can simulate the sun's movement around a building at various times of day for an entire year to determine if windows have been effectively shaded.
"Our hope is that by using OpenStudio in design charrettes, users can start throwing away designs at the very beginning of a project, saying: 'This is not a good design because we're going to use too much energy," Nick Long, an NREL engineer who helped develop OpenStudio, said in a statement.
You could call us the "caulk gun militia."
Last month, I joined about 40 other volunteers, armed to the teeth with materials to weatherize a two-family home. Despite the rain and a few errant squirts of insulating foam, we made the leaky New England home significantly more energy efficient, largely by sealing all manner of leaks.
We won't know the financial impact of our work until after the winter months, but it will undoubtedly lower the residents' heating and electricity bills in future years. Along the way, we learned a few things we could do at our own homes, met some people in the community, and felt good about volunteering our time.
A blower door measures how air tight a home is by measuring air flow at a given air pressure.
(Credit: Martin LaMonica/CNET)Credit for the idea behind our barn raising goes to Cambridge, Mass.-based HEET, or Home Energy Efficiency Team, a volunteer group that has organized a number of these events over the past year. The goal isn't just to weatherize one building; it's to teach as well. After all, many people want to be a little more green in their personal lives--and who doesn't want to lower their utility bills?--but not everybody knows how.
The evidence is just anecdotal, but it seems that the practice is taking hold in a few other places. When I went to a training session this summer at a drafty Victorian in Cambridge, there were about 10 people from other towns and states looking to start their own local chapters.
Weatherizing homes won't solve all our energy and climate challenges. But while many folks are intent on high-tech (and high-priced) solutions to our energy problems, weatherization is a sensible, low-cost place to start. About 40 percent of the energy in the U.S. goes to commercial and residential buildings and investments in efficiency typically have the fastest payback. Weatherizing a home could cut energy use by as much as 30 percent, according to the Department of Energy, and many steps at are relatively inexpensive.
Even at an event devoted to the potential of solar power--the Solar Decathlon--U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu last week underscored how important energy efficiency is to the country's energy policy and people's pocketbooks. In every place they've lived, Chu said he and his wife have made a game of trying to cut energy bills in half from the previous owner.
Foam patrol
Well, our little barn raising effort probably won't cut the homeowners' bills in half. But for less than $500 in material, a good amount of planning, and a bit of sweat equity, we did pretty well. Every group can set up their own rules, but typically it's the homeowner who fronts the money for the materials--as well as donuts, coffee, and pizza. They're welcome to lend a hand as well.
Much of the work we did can be done by a weekend do-it-yourselfer. But your task can be greatly helped by a knowledgeable person or a professional. I always recommend people get an energy audit to help them form a home efficiency game plan. Many of them are free, sponsored by states or utilities, while others can cost about $500 for more extensive work (Go to EfficiencyFirst to find an auditor in your location.)
In our case, a local contractor donated the use of a blower door--a temporary door with a fan and monitor attached to it--to test the air leakage before and after our work. A blower door, which exaggerates the air flow through existing holes, helped locate a few big problems. For example, the frame around the basement door had a gap which was letting in a lot of outside air. The faster air flows up into your house from below, the faster the conditioned air--be it cool or hot--goes through roof.
Our group split up into different teams, focusing on different areas in the house. An electrical group, which was led by a professional electrician, installed compact florescent bulbs and covered up electrical outlets with foam barriers. In the basement, I co-led a team of people who insulated hot water pipes and the hot water heater. A bunch of people fanned out to caulk or foam the spots in the basement ceiling and windows where air seeps in from the outside.
In all the home's zones, we spotted and filled holes, going through many bottles of caulk and cans of expanding foam. The attic crew covered spots in the attic where air was creeping up, another crew caulked around windows in the living space, while another filled gaps in the basement windows and where the stone foundation meets the wood framing.
Before starting, those many little holes added up to a large area--the equivalent of about two sheets of printer paper. After the weatherizing, the air leakage in one unit was cut by almost 13 percent, which is a bit better than average, and the other by 24 percent, which everyone agreed was a very good result.
The two families living there were clearly very grateful. Homes are chosen pretty much by word of mouth. In this case, we worked with the local non-profit affordable housing organization which has made environmental sustainability part of their plans.
It's a journey
Although the bulk of the work was done by nonprofessionals, there's still a good amount of skill required, particularly in the diagnosis. Is there a bigger payoff in putting weatherstripping around the front door? Or should you focus on fixing that door that leads to the attic? Also, there can be many routes to fixing the same problem.
This is where energy contractors are supposed to help. But even before you hire somebody, I still think it's wise to read up on what's considered best practices in home weatherization. At the very least, the better educated you are, the more value you'll get from an audit by asking questions specific to your situation. You could start your own barn raising group if you got expert enough.
There's a wealth of information online, including the Department of Energy's EnergySavers.gov Web site. One book I'd recommend for the average consumer is Bruce Harley's "Cut your Energy Bills Now" but there are many others.
Of course, greening your home isn't just about plugging leaks--that's just the cheapest place to start. After that, there are a number of options--water-saving bathroom fixtures, better insulation, or more efficient heating and cooling. For big-ticket items, you can look at solar power or an efficient geothermal, or ground-source, heat pump. I've been trying to lower the energy load in my own home for years and I still consider it a work in progress so it's good to have a long-term plan.
The skills you learn can come in handy whenever you do home improvements like putting on an addition or new floor; those are opportunities to insulate or block air holes. Also, armed with the knowledge of how important air sealing is will keep contractors on their toes. In my experience, electricians and cable installers will blithely drill holes wherever it's convenient for them.
In the meantime, our local HEET group is looking for more. It's usually not simple to organize a group of volunteers to do something they've never tried before. The work itself is not what you'd call glamorous either. But having worked on a few barn raisings now, I'd say it's well worth the effort.
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.
