Today's Technology -- Available Today!

Themes abound at the Solar Decathlon, and not necessarily the obvious ones ("we have solar panels on the roof!")  Cornell University's entry, the subject of my first blog from this event, presents what the team calls a 'post-agrarian' look, with its silo-shaped living spaces and wild grasses serving as a reminder of the vanishing farmland of upstate New York.  Iowa State's Interlock House is designed with seniors in mind.  Wisconsin-Milwaukee's house physically mimics the shapes of the landscape surrounding the university while striving to use only local and regional materials in its construction.  And Team Boston has made a point of using off-the-shelf items for almost all the needs of its Curio.House, with an eye to predictability of market construction costs.  

Curio.House, in fact, has already been sold by the Tufts/Boston Architectural College team to a developer in Sandwich, on Cape Cod.  This will become a centerpiece of 'Community Green', a post-homeless community off Old King's Highway in the Cape's oldest town, sponsored by the Cape's non-profit Housing Assistance Corporation. 

The 'affordability' theme is reflected in Team Boston's choice of micro-inverters on the panels in their house's 6.4-kW PV array, allowing each panel's performance to be individually monitored.  Although not unique in the competition, the arrangement makes the point that the array's size -- and therefore cost -- can be tailored to a homebuyer's needs. 

Jeff Stein, Dean of the architectural school, points out that Curio.House is a "house of the present", except for one important feature: the floor-to-ceiling windows covering most of the building's north and south walls.  These are certainly not off-the-shelf items, but one day might be.  They are triple-layered, the layers separated by a clear aerogel that is warmed by the sun during the day, and re-radiates that warmth into the house after sundown.  On the north windows, polycarbonate panels decrease heat loss and help block winter winds.

Team Boston's house also features a glycol-based solar thermal array for domestic hot water and radiant heating, LEDs and CFLs for lighting, exterior roller shades and a south roof overhang to regulate heat incursion, and an energy recovery ventilator to provide fresh outside air while minimizing energy loss.  What's important about these items is not that they're unique to Curio.House -- they can be found in many buildings in the solar village -- but that they are available in today's construction market.  And what matters most, for the healthy growth of renewable energy/energy efficiency, is for the construction industry to adopt these kinds of techniques and materials as standard in new homes.  In fact, when choosing what to include in -- and exclude from -- bills of materials in order to control costs, one would hope that builders would sacrifice items such as granite counter tops and crown moldings in favor of energy-related features.

But for that to happen, the customer -- the homebuyer -- has to demand it.  And that's where the real value of one hundred thousand people visiting the Solar Decathlon, and learning what's possible with today's technology, is to be found. 

Curio.House under construction, showing those very special windows