Sunny Skies for Third Decathlon

“This competition is much more than an elaborate experiment by a bunch of college kids.”

By David Sadighian

Exchanging facebook for photovoltaics, 20 teams of university students will compete in the U.S. Department of Energy’s third Solar Decathlon, between October 12 and 20 on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

Contestants are selected by the Department of Energy (DOE) and allotted a stipend of $100,000 to design, engineer, and construct a high-performance solar home over the course of two years. The home is then displayed in Washington for visitors and judges.
“The Decathlon helps move solar- energy technologies into the marketplace faster,” says DOE representative John Horst. “The main objective is for students to come away with the ability to work with these technologies.”

The 2007 competition will feature the designs of eleven new and nine returning teams, selected from universities in the U. S. and Puerto Rico, Germany, Spain, and Canada. The solar-powered homes will be judged in ten different categories ranging from architecture (worth the most points), to market viability (new this year), and even on a “getting around” quotient, which calculates the miles traveled of electric cars docked at each home’s solar energy network.

The competition will test each team’s ability to create a functioning, 800-square-foot, single-family residence with no external energy sources and a zero-carbon footprint. But aside from integrating contemporary technologies and high-performance systems, an
aesthetic standard is also included in the rubric.

“The idea is that they’re trying to seamlessly blend solar technologies into the design of a home,” Horst says.

The Decathlon debuted in 2002 with a smaller scope: 14 teams competed with only $5,000 each in funding. Since the 2005 competition, Horst says, funding and interest in the Decathlon has increased, resulting in more complex solutions and solar energy systems.

Alex Miller, captain of the University of Texas at Austin team and 2007 graduate in architecture, notes that the Decathlon supplemented his studies by providing a thorough education in construction. “The process shows you what an eighth of an inch really means,” he says, referring to the symbolic nature of architectural drawings versus the realities of construction.

The UT-Austin team enrolled 100 students in disciplines including engineering, fine arts, architecture, graphic design, and business to design and market their solar house. Like their competitors, a team of 20 members constructed the design on campus. It will be dissembled and transported to the National Mall for this month’s competition.

The University of Colorado at Boulder team, the champion of the 2002 and 2005 competitions, plans to bring only a fraction of their 2,100-square-foot home to the competition.

“One of the shortcomings of the competition is that the systems are over-sized to produce much more power than typical residences require,” says Chad Corbin, Boulder team captain and graduate student. Corbin intends for their design, comparable to the average American home, to “help demonstrate to the public that this competition is much more than an elaborate experiment by a bunch of college students.”

Nonetheless, the Decathlon remains a testing ground for fledging student architects and engineers to play with the possibilities of solar power. After listing UT-Austin’s glut of high-performance data, Alex Miller reveals another feature of their home: a solar thermal hot tub, which he plans to demo with swimsuit-clad Longhorns. Miller says, “we’re trying to make it fun, approachable, and energy efficient.”

 

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