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| 'Solar 7' nears completion in a Cambridge, Mass., parking lot near the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The house is
now displayed on the Mall in Washington, D.C. Solar 7 |
Students compete to design solar homes
Full-size 'Solar Decathlon' entries populate Washington's Mall Oct. 12-19.
By Caitlin Carpenter | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitorfrom the October 11, 2007 edition
Page 1 of 4
Cambridge, Mass. - If the predictions of 1950s futurists had come true, we'd be whizzing to work in hovercrafts as domestic robots cleaned our prefab domes. While such idealistic prophesies are often tempered by time, that hasn't kept academics and inventors from creating bold visions about the home of tomorrow.
That's exactly what brought 20 teams from universities across the country and around the world to Washington, D.C., this week. And rather than presenting Styrofoam renderings or computer images of their visions, they're trucking full-size working models of their homes of the future in a bid to win the third Solar Decathlon, sponsored by the US Department of Energy and taking place on the National Mall.
Beginning Oct. 12 and continuing through the 19th, the 20 solar-powered homes will be viewed by movers and shakers from the world of sustainable housing as well as members of the public.
"These aren't futuristic pods or anything like that," says James Bickford, student leader of the Santa Clara (Calif.) University team. "We just integrated some of the best and most efficient products out there into a house that people would actually want to live in."
The first decathlon was held in 2002 and another in 2005 with the intention to hold the decathlon every two years thereafter. The DOE gives each student team $100,000 to build a house that relies exclusively on solar power and uses products already on the market.
A team of experts will judge the homes in 10 categories (hence, "decathlon"), including communications (how well they explain the technology to the public), architecture, and getting around (how far an electric car charged by the house's solar panels can go). The teams also cook dinner for the judges using energy-efficient appliances. Drying towels is another challenge.
The DOE's goals for the competition are twofold: to arrive at a consensus on what the best "green" design practices are by 2015, and to have a house produce electricity for
10 cents a kilowatt hour – competitive with public utilities. Along the way, the DOE hopes to encourage tomorrow's engineers, architects, and homeowners.
The team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a first-time competitor, began working on their house, Solar 7, back in February 2006 with the hope of unseating two-time victor University of Colorado. MIT students spent countless hours almost every weeknight and weekend to develop their entry.
Today, their home stands beside other entries on Washington's Mall. Solar 7 is an 800-square-foot cedar clapboard home. The interior is made from bamboo, a material that grows four times faster than wood. It has a bedroom, kitchen, and bathroom with sliding doors that can subdivide the space to make it more versatile. Despite its small size (set by competition rules), Solar 7 has all the labor-saving devices: washer, dryer, oven, refrigerator, TV, computer, and dishwasher.
The walls are made of "wheat board" (ground-up wheat stubble), which made the house "smell like a barn" before the board was fireproofed, says Corey Fucetola, MIT's project manager. The black kitchen countertop is made from paper and resin, and the south-facing wall out of structural insulated panels that create a "warm wall."
Products must be on the market
The insulated panels are set to go on the market this week, and the MIT team thinks they may give them the winning edge. The one-foot-thick panels are made of two sheets of opaque plastic with water sandwiched between them. The panels' exteriors are coated with Aerogel, which transmits sunlight through to the water to heat the interior of the house without letting heat escape.
In the summer, an awning mounted over the warm wall keeps sunlight from hitting it and heating the house.
Unlike the pie-in-the-sky futures of the past, the technology in these homes is not only achievable, proponents say, but urgently needed as a way to deal with global warming and energy shortages.
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