Green Building Elements

The 20 teams selected for the 2009 Solar Decathlon have been announced by the US Department of Energy. Each team will receive a $100,000 grant from the DOE to be used for creating a completely solar-powered home for the competition.

The full list can be found in an article at Custom Home Online. The 2009 competition has some international flavor, including last year’s winner, the Technische Universität Darmstadt, as well as the Universidad Polytécnica de Madrid and two groupings of Canadian universities.

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One former faculty adviser to a university Decathlon team lamented the reduction of the Solar Decathlon to a more narrow range of design concepts. The first few Decathlons were wide-open events, with very different designs. But with certain criteria in place, the strategies have been narrowed down to address the specific problems posed by the Decathlon challenge. These are still good designs that are being produced, but they are now tuned to a set of particular requirements and criteria.

Homes designed for the Decathlon should perhaps be viewed in the same spirit as one views Formula One race cars compared to ordinary cars. In the cases of both the auto race and the Solar Decathlon, the competitors are tuned for specific ways of maximizing the allowable methods for winning a contest. While some developments in the competition may trickle down to more prosaic, domestic uses, it’s not a representative testbed.

We’ll certainly be looking at the entries when the Decathlon is held; however, I don’t expect to see great numbers of them making an appearance in a neighborhood anytime soon. Like race cars, they are great to look at, and fun to think about using, but for most of us, they aren’t a practical alternative to what we have now.
Image (Kansas State/Univ. Kansas 2007 entry in front of Washington Monument) via Curious Cat

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