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The UA is one of only 15 American universities selected for the national competition.

By University Communications
March 4, 2008

A multidisciplinary team from The University of Arizona is one of only 20 university-led teams selected to compete in the fourth Solar Decathlon, which will be held on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., in the fall of 2009.

The Solar Decathlon, operated by the U.S. Department of Energy, will bring together teams from the United States, Canada and Germany to design, build and operate an energy efficient, fully solar-powered home for the competition. Each team will receive $100,000 from the department for development expenses.

The UA was one of only three universities in the western U.S – along with Rice University and Santa Clara University – selected to participate in the competition.

Each home will utilize energy efficient technology and demonstrate that homes powered entirely by the sun do not have to sacrifice all the modern comforts and aesthetics Americans are accustomed to enjoying.

The UA’s team will be led by faculty advisers Dale Clifford and Jason Vollen, assistant professors in the College of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, and Joseph Simmons, head of the department of materials science and engineering in the College of Engineering. Students from architecture, materials science and biosystems engineering also will serve as project leaders.

”We saw this as an opportunity to develop a collaborative effort between emerging material technologies, urban design, materials science and the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences,” Clifford said. “We hope it will redefine the process of design from the ground up.”

Researchers involved in the Solar Decathlon cite the importance of emerging materials in the development of new sustainable designs. “We are in a materials revolution," said Álvaro Malo, director of the UA’s emerging materials technology program. “There is a tremendous amount of research on materials that will have long-lasting effects on our economy.”

Malo and Clifford see the Solar Decathlon as an opportunity to see growth in the productivity of new materials and to spark innovation in architecture.

“We’re working on increasing the performance of materials to increase the potential of an architectural product,” Clifford said.

Student involvement in the competition began last semester in an architectural studio class. More than 20 courses over the next two years will feature a Solar Decathlon element, with students being tasked to help design, develop, market and construct the house.

“These creative teams will develop livable, working, energy efficient and marketable home designs powered by cutting-edge, currently available solar energy technology,” U.S. Secretary of Energy Samuel W. Bodman said. “The caliber of this year’s proposals was outstanding and we were thrilled with the significant increase in the number of applicants. It will be exciting to watch as the students work over the next year and a half to design, build, test and showcase these homes."

In addition to producing enough electricity and hot water to perform all the functions of a home, from powering lights and electronics to cooking, washing clothes and dishes, each Solar Decathlon home must produce surplus energy sufficient to power an electric car. The team that finishes the week of competition with the most points wins.

Selected design concepts represent a range of building technologies from diverse geographic locations.

Applications for the competition were evaluated by a panel made up of engineers, scientists and other experts from the Department of Energy and its National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Teams were required to meet specific criteria, demonstrating their ability to design and build an innovative, entirely solar-powered, 800-square-foot home from scratch, including the ability to raise additional funds and assemble a team necessary to carry the project through to completion.

The next steps for the UA team include thematic design, raising addition donations of cash and in-kind contributions, developing prototype components for the house and testing them. The Arizona Research Institute for Solar Energy, known as AzRISE, has matched the Department of Energy's contribution of $100,000.

”Payback for the development of the prototype will be tremendous and will benefit the consumers,” Malo said.

The Solar Decathlon supports the President’s Solar America Initiative, which seeks to make solar a cost-competitive source of energy by 2015.