Solar Decathlon Competition

Many of you probably already know about the Solar Decathlon, but for those of you who do not I’ll give a brief introduction here and provide some links so anyone who is interested can follow up. I am a veteran of two decathlons (2007 with Texas A&M and 2009 with Rice University) and so I’ll try to illustrate what the event islike from a student’s perspective – in my case an architecture student.

The Solar Decathlon is a competition administered jointly by the US Department of Energy and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, which challenges teams of college students to design and build a small house entirely powered by solar energy (typically a combination of passive solar, photovoltaic, and solar hot water). Twenty teams are selected from the pool of applicants and given roughly two years to complete their house and ship it to Washington D.C. where all of
the projects are reassembled in a solar village on the National Mall. After a brief construction period the houses are ‘turned on’ and the teams compete against each other for about two weeks in ten energy-related events, hence the title decathlon. During this period the homes are also regularly opened for public tours and the event typically draws around 125,000 spectators.

2005 Solar Decathlon, Washington D.C.

Several factors make the Solar Decathlon an exciting and engaging enterprise. First and foremost it is a chance to put your money where your mouth is (quite literally). It is easy to promote solar energy, incorporate solar into your school projects, etc. It is something else to engage in a contract with the government where you are bound to an absolute deadline to provide a finished building that is 100% zero energy.yes""> The sobering prospect of accounting for the production and use of every single watt of electricity make many instant converts to the doctrine of efficiency – if you minimize the need, you minimize the amount of production. Furthermore, designing the systems and getting the energy models to work is only half the battle, while installing them, testing their actual output, and getting them to perform on the Mall are in themselves major undertakings.

2007 Solar Decathlon Winner, Team Germany

A second beneficial aspect to participating in the Solar Decathlon is the necessity to form interdisciplinary teams. Typically, teams are comprised of a core of engineering and architecture students with a variety of wildcards such as business students, economists, ecologists, English majors and others (one of the team leaders for the Rice house was a Spanish major who was just really passionate about solar energy!). Then you throw in the myriad professional consultants that often offer their services to teams pro bono. Getting down in the trenches with all these folks on a high-pressure, live project is extremely valuable exposure.

2009 Solar Decathlon, Cornell House

Finally, there is the event itself. I have to say that as an aspiring architect I gained a life long admiration for good engineers who, during this completion, play these houses like musical instruments. Their ability to gauge the houses performance and ration energy for critical tasks certainly adds drama to the event. For the rest of us, giving the seeming endless public tours is a way to permanently imprint every detail about the design into your brain. Also, seeing nineteen other incredible houses and talking to other students who’ve been working under the same constraints is certainly intriguing.

2007 Solar Decathlon, Texas A&M House

I apologize for the lengthy post, but if you made it this far presumably you have some interest. I’ll add a few links below and if you have any general questions about the Solar Decathlon I’d be happy to do my best to answer them.

Solar Decathlon Home