Electric Co-op Today

At the 2011 Solar Decathlon, a lot of homes look like the Jetsons might live inside. There’s also one that looks like it came straight out of Middle America—because it did.

New Zealand’s entry is inspired by the look of a traditional vacation home in that country. (Photo By: Michael W. Kahn)

Held every other year in Washington, D.C., the Department of Energy-sponsored decathlon features 19 college teams from around the world. Each has spent nearly two years designing and building solar-powered houses that compete in 10 areas, including architecture, affordability and market appeal. The winner, to be announced Oct. 1, gets a trophy and bragging rights.

LONG HAUL

It took six weeks to ship Victoria University of Wellington’s “First Light” home from New Zealand via the Panama Canal, and then another week to reassemble and prepare it.

Efficiency is crucial in New Zealand, where electricity runs about 25 cents per kilowatt-hour, so the house has a system monitoring energy use “right down to the circuit level,” said Ben Jagersma, a graduate architecture student. “And we’ve broken up the circuits to each appliance.” An in-home display enables residents to see power usage.

One decathlon contest requires teams to wash and dry six bath towels. The dryer in New Zealand’s house would befuddle the Maytag repairman.

Towels are placed on hot water-filled rails inside a cupboard. Hot water is pumped through a heat exchanger, which then heats the air inside the cupboard. The towels dry while a fan extracts humid air.

“It’s running about two-and-a-half hours to dry six bath towels,” Jagersma said, noting the lack of sunshine in recent days. With sun to heat the water, that could be cut by 30 minutes.

When the decathlon ends Oct. 2, Jagersma said the house will be disassembled and returned to New Zealand. “It’s being sold to a lady who’s going to set the house up as her retirement home.”

MIDWEST COMFORT

Purdue University is located in West Lafayette, Ind., and the first thing you notice about their participants’ house is that it wouldn’t be out of place there.

Familiar Midwest comfort and style figure into Purdue University’s home. (Photo By: Michael W. Kahn)

“We really believe that if people are going to transition into solar living—which we hope they do—it’s got to be something they’re familiar with already,” said Sarah Miller, a graduate teaching assistant in construction management and sustainability.

“Especially in the Midwest, we like our comforts and amenities we’re used to.”

That’s why the INhome, short for “Indiana home,” looks like a nice suburban house, both inside and out. Under decathlon rules, houses cannot exceed 1,000 square feet; INhome is 984 square feet.

“It’s combining the practicality of the living we’re used to with updated technology to help you become more efficient,” Miller said.

The house is designed to be connected to the grid. “In Indiana, you’re overproducing in the summer,” Miller explained. “And in the wintertime, you’re pulling back from the grid when you need it. So the net zero factor is over the course of a 365-day year.” In fact, based on its calculations, the Purdue team expects the house to overproduce energy.

Purdue is working with a nonprofit group to find a needy family to live in the home when it returns to Indiana.

GOING UP

City College of New York designed its appropriately named Solar Roofpod to go on rooftops, making better use of urban space that’s often underutilized.

Yes, that’s an end door from the New York subway car inside CCNY’s home. (Photo By: Michael W. Kahn)

The home is comprised of three layers, each built in blocks that can be put in an elevator so that you can “build the entire house, block-by-block, on a roof,” explained Farah Ahmad, a CCNY undergraduate. A laser-burnt etching on the facade is clearly visible to birds, so they don’t fly into it.

The team built the decathlon house on the roof of a building at the school’s Manhattan campus, some 80 blocks north of Midtown. “We craned it off and put it into two flatbed trucks, so it was in two halves, and transported it here,” Ahmad said.

Because it was part of a building, it had to meet codes, and that led to one of its most unique features: a genuine subway car door.

“New York City building code dictates that you need a fire door for the mechanical room,” Ahmad explained. And city subway doors meet that requirement, so a professor found one from a retired car.

“It really brings a piece of home into our home.”

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Tags: Energy Efficiency, R&D, Solar Energy, Solar Power