Students help design, build solar house

CinSUNnati, the University of Cincinnati's Solar Decathlon team, recently learned that they will be one of the 20 teams to compete in the 2007 competition.

The Solar Decathlon is a two-year competition in which universities from across the nation, as well as teams from Europe and Canada, compete to design an energy efficient solar powered house to be displayed on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

"The next generation of leaders will have an opportunity to shine as they compete in the 2007 Solar Decathlon," Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said in a press release. "Supplying enough clean, affordable energy to fuel the world's growing economies is one of the great challenges we will face over the coming years. By helping expand the use of solar energy technologies, the participants will help meet that challenge."

The 2007 competition marks the first time a team from UC will be participating in the Solar Decathlon.

"We got involved because I saw some news article about it on the Internet, about a month after they put out the request for proposals," Christopher Davis, a student director of the competition and architecture graduate student, said.

After learning about the competition, Davis, along with a few other DAAP students, prepared the initial proposal.

"We put together this 25-page book of essentially our ideas on how we would go about doing the project, and we submitted that to the Department of Energy," Davis said.

The team plans to make this project an interdisciplinary event with students from DAAP, the College of Engineering and the College of Business all participating.

Along with student involvement, the team will also consist of faculty members to serve as advisors that will help keep the project on track.

"The way that we're putting it together is mainly faculty advisors with mostly student leadership," Davis said. "We're going to be trying to find a good number of students in architecture, engineering, industrial design and business, and our plan is to have a studio next quarter."

The team plans to open a design studio in the Spring and Summer quarters in order to get the house design ready for their June deadline.

"A lot of the organizational stuff is already started," Davis said. "Our plan is that Spring Quarter we will have the interdisciplinary studio to actually get most of the actual design for the project done."

In total, the team could consist of up to 60 members, both students and faculty, performing the various tasks involved.

"There will be so many different levels of involvement," Davis said. "Whether it is leadership or whether it's managing the construction process or coming up with our business strategy or our branding types of things, and designing our Web site and marketing, and contacting sponsors and things like that."

The project is estimated to cost around $300,000, said Davis, with the DOE providing $100,000 to each team participating to help fund the project.

It is up to each team to raise the remaining funds needed to successfully accomplish the project.

Currently, the UC team is looking to partner with General Electric to develop environmentally friendly products to go with the house.

The team is also negotiating with Uptown Consortium to make the decathlon house a part of an urban village with sustainable housing, according to Davis.

The 2007 competition will be the third installment of the Solar Decathlon. The University of Boulder Colorado won both the 2002 and 2005 competitions.

The UC team is confident in their ability to compete in this competition.

"We're ready to give Colorado a real run for their money," Davis said in a press release.