Cheap, green, and beautiful: The future of housing…

The winners of the 2021 Solar Decathlon Build Challenge show how to build energy-efficient housing in extreme climates—the kinds of conditions climate change will only make more prevalent.

 
these-prototype-homes-are-the-future-of-energy
Another view of the UC Boulder entry [Rendering: courtesy United States Department of Energy]
It’s a multifront design challenge that Granholm likened to a much bigger challenge facing designers and builders. “In so many ways our fight against the climate crisis is a lot like the decathlon. We’ve got all these individual contests to get through,” Granholm said. “There are new playbooks in this climate fight on energy efficiency, on renewables, on modernizing the grid, on decarbonizing the building sector, decarbonizing the transportation sector, decarbonizing the industrial sector. We can’t win unless we rewrite them all.”
these-prototype-homes-are-the-future-of-energy
Another view of the UC Boulder entry [Photo: courtesy United States Department of Energy]

he highest-ranked home in the competition was designed and built by a team from the University of Colorado in Boulder. Their two-story, two-unit house was designed to offer an efficient and affordable alternative to the high-priced houses in the region. Accommodating the cold and snowy climate, the home managed to reduce its estimated annual utilities cost to about 10% of a conventionally built home in the area. Using equipment such as solar-tracking photovoltaic panels, an energy-recovery ventilator that reuses exhaust heat from the home’s appliances, and highly efficient air conditioning through zone-based ductless mini-split heat pumps, the home generates an estimated 321 kilowatt-hours of excess electricity that is stored in on-site batteries. A rentable accessory dwelling unit provides a source of extra income for the owners while adding another affordable housing option for the region’s lower-income families.

The highest-ranked home in the competition was designed and built by a team from the University of Colorado in Boulder. Their two-story, two-unit house was designed to offer an efficient and affordable alternative to the high-priced houses in the region. Accommodating the cold and snowy climate, the home managed to reduce its estimated annual utilities cost to about 10% of a conventionally built home in the area. Using equipment such as solar-tracking photovoltaic panels, an energy-recovery ventilator that reuses exhaust heat from the home’s appliances, and highly efficient air conditioning through zone-based ductless mini-split heat pumps, the home generates an estimated 321 kilowatt-hours of excess electricity that is stored in on-site batteries. A rentable accessory dwelling unit provides a source of extra income for the owners while adding another affordable housing option for the region’s lower-income families.

The University of Waterloo entry [Rendering: courtesy United States Department of Energy]

The second-place finisher designed a home for an equally harsh climate. Designed and built by a team from the University of Waterloo, the project is an affordable net-zero-energy home designed in conjunction with the Chippewas of Nawash Indigenous community in Ontario. With a fairly straightforward rectangular footprint and classic gabled roof, the house’s energy-efficiency innovations are hidden inside, where a hybrid electric water heater tank and heat pump uses electrical resistance and ambient heat to provide the home’s warm water. Triple-glazed windows and an insulated concrete foundation help the home retain its own heat, using 55% less energy than a conventionally designed home.

 

Another angle on the University of Waterloo entry [Photo: courtesy United States Department of Energy]

On the other end of the climate spectrum, the competition’s third-place finisher is a house in the hot and arid Southwest, designed and built by a team from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Designed specifically for veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injuries, the house is low on energy, while also providing an accessible floor plan and thick insulation to prevent potentially jarring outside noises from bothering the resident. Designed with PV panels and on-site battery storage systems, the home is capable of powering itself off the grid for up to three days. The narrow rectangular structure also features a small central courtyard that’s shaded from the desert sun and cooled by interior living walls of drought-tolerant desert vines that are hydroponically irrigated with recirculated water.

An interior view of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, entry [Rendering: courtesy United States Department of Energy]

All the entries were designed and built over the course of multiple years by teams that started the competition in 2019. The process of turning their designs into built prototypes was complicated by the pandemic. Constructed by the student designers themselves as well as some volunteers from Habitat for Humanity, the homes were designed with expert input from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado.

Another view of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, entry [Rendering: courtesy United States Department of Energy]

Launched by the Department of Energy in 2002, the Solar Decathlon usually brings its top-ranked designs to the National Mall in Washington, D.C., to be displayed to the public, but the pandemic necessitated some workarounds, both for the Build Challenge as well as the larger Design Challenge, which included energy-efficient building designs from dozens of university teams. Instead of physical displays of the houses, the Decathlon has created a virtual tour that allows users to view photos, videos, and 360-degree tours of the insides and outsides of the structures. Tests show their energy performance compared to conventionally designed homes, and some have been able to achieve savings that represent thousands of dollars off residents’ utility bills.

Weber State University’s entry [Photo: courtesy United States Department of Energy]

The results are impressive and hint at a near future when buildings represent a much smaller chunk of the world’s energy use and carbon footprint. The Solar Decathlon competition is a testing ground for the new approaches and technologies that can help the broader design and construction industry improve the energy efficiency and environmental sustainability of buildings. Through design techniques as well as a growing pool of young design professionals, the effects of the competition eventually trickle up into the design and construction industry.

The entry from Kansas State University [Photo: courtesy United States Department of Energy]

In her announcement of the competition’s winners, Granholm celebrated this next generation of energy-efficient housing and also called on the dozens of student participants in the competition to pursue energy-efficient design as a profession once they graduate. The need and the potential, she argued, are massive.

“There are more than 125 million buildings in the U.S. alone,” Granholm said. “We’ve got to find smarter and easier and more affordable ways to retrofit them all, to rethink them, to rewrite the playbook on all of them.”
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