Team Germany Wins 2009 Solar Decathlon

by Katherine Gustafson · 2009-10-16 06:18:00 UTC
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In yesterday's photo essay of the Solar Decathlon action on the National Mall, I was missing one crucial detail: the contest's winner, which had yet to be announced.

So I'm here bright and early today to bring you the breaking news: Team Germany has just been named overall champion of the 2009 Solar Decathlon. The team was in second place yesterday before the engineering competition, which edged them out over University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Third prize goes to Team California.

The house is basically a two-story cube with a big, square living space inside. The walls and roof are entirely coated with solar-collectors that generate two times the energy the house requires. The interior, an undivided multifunctional space, is kept at a comfortable temperature with various cutting-edge insulation techniques.

The 24-member team mostly composed of architecture students took on the philosophy of trying to "push the envelope with as many new technologies as possible" and relied on the advice on the 2007 to help them clobber the competition.

They used single-crystal silicon solar panels on the roof, and lined the sides of the home with thin-film copper indium gallium diselenide. The house has custom-made vacuum insulation structural panes and features phase-change material, namely paraffin in the walls and salt hydrate in the ceiling.

Huh?

Maybe the students can explain it themselves:

Photo courtesy of Department of Energy

Katherine Gustafson
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