German Team Wins 2009 Solar Decathlon

An anonymous reader writes "Our team recently competed in the 2009 US Department of Energy Solar Decathlon. The Solar Decathlon is a 2-year competition that challenges university students from 20 US and international teams to design, build, and operate the most attractive and energy-efficient solar-powered house. Objective scores are based on comfort control, appliance performance, net-metering, and home entertainment. Subjective contest scores are determined by juries that weigh the engineering design, architectural design, as well as marketing and communication strategies. Team Germany took 1st place due to a large net production of electricity, while Team California claimed top honors in the Architecture contest. Minnesota won the engineering design section. However, looking beyond the contest winners, the main purpose of the event is to raise awareness about solar technology and sustainable design. As part of this campaign, products used in all 20 homes are listed on the DOE website. The most exciting aspect is that the construction and engineering documents and communication materials from all teams are open-sourced for anyone to use or modify!"

Hopefully ...

[foobsr]

The most exciting aspect is that the construction and engineering documents and communication materials from all teams are open-sourced for anyone to use or modify!

... they have chosen a proper "IP-format" to avoid patent trolls to grab ideas in order to 'protect' them.

CC.

Nice but

[samuX]

I'm very happy to see this kind of competition however from a scientific prospective i see some problem: saying you save co2 with solar energy is a bit "gross", first to produce all those solar panels you had to pollute the environment so the first question someone should ask is : ok solar is good but how much do you pollute to produce one flat panel ? Are we sure the pollution made (and i'm not speaking only about amount of CO2 but also toxic in rivers, sea etc. etc. ) to make a solar panel is less than the one we would make to make the same power from "classic" method ? CO2 savings: well this is just ridiculous: a nuclear reactor, a wind reactor, a carbon fuel power plant, a hydroelectric power plant. 4 ways of getting electricity, four different amount of Co2 produced, so from what kind of power plant does your electricity come, this is how you try to figure out your real "co2 savings" . Next thing to speak about should the fact that our pollution doesn't come only from Co2 but from toxic wastes too, so measuring pollution with Co2 is ineffective and misleading. I really DO care for my planet and sometimes looks like all this "environmental talks" are just exscuses to push new products rather than really doing something to make earth a better place for our future generations but I might be wrong .

Re:solar

[drinkypoo]

PV is totally accessible to the homeowner who has a clue. Yes, I do expect everyone to be able to wire a PV system. Specialization is for Insects... plus, it's stupidly simple to wire PV. And if you can't figure out house wiring as an adult, you deserve to be electrocuted. You can trivially find solar panels under $3/watt. If you control your consumption, you can save absurd amounts of money. Buy a chest fridge (or add a thermostat to a chest freezer to make it a fridge) and stop heating your whole house unnecessarily (do you really need to walk around naked in the whole thing?) and you can typically save a huge percentage of your energy budget. And since most people are grid-tied, they can do without batteries. PG&E, at least, will install a time-of-use meter for free. The only really expensive part is involving an electrical contractor for the service disconnect.

Thermal is cool when you need heat, but when you need electricity it's a horribly inefficient way to go for small systems. And let's face it, we all use electricity. I realize that a lot of people are out on the street right now and not in a position to build much of anything, but for the rest of us, cutting back on nonessentials and living further within our means is enough. You don't have to build a solar system all at once, the job is easy enough to where any basically healthy adult ought to be able to do it, and to claim otherwise is to make excuses. How many times have you helped someone with a computer problem and found the problem in the help right where it ought to be, only to have the user say "If I knew it was that easy, I would have done it myself!" Well, why didn't you look in the help, you lazy fucko? The same is true of the basic skills in wiring needed for a PV installation.

Re:Nice but

[samuX]

what you say is reasonable but there are a lot of assumptions and i really would like to see some numbers.
Back in the old days pc were relatively polluting and none ever thought about that. Now we know of all the toxic problem related to their making - and their reciclying - so most companies are working on making them more "green".

So what about solar panel ? Are they made with this concepts in mind or are they made just as cheap as possible without taking in account pollution made to make them or not? How long does it takes to make them "greener" or , using math, when this is true ?

"amount of electricity of one panel per day" * "X days" + "pollution produced to make that panel" > "pollution per day of a fossile fuel power plant giving the same amount of electricity"
(i really hope it's readible)

Also you forget that solar panel will not last forever, so depending on the X of the equation above you can make some good assumption rather than running to solar panel because "they told me it's green so it must be".