Show-Me Solar team heads to Washington
The team spent a year designing a sustainable solar home.
Published Oct. 9, 2009
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Show-Me Solar team and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee's team build solar houses Sunday in front of the Washington Monument. MU and University of Missouri Science and Technology teamed up to build a house for the Solar Decathlon.
A yearlong collaborative effort between MU and Missouri University of Science and Technology students finally paid off Thursday as they unveiled this year's Solar Decathlon competition house on the National Mall in Washington.
"The Solar Decathlon is an international design competition where university students are challenged to design and build a net-zero home," staff adviser Barbara Buffaloe said. "MU students have teamed with MS&T students for the Show-Me Solar team."
Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy, the competition emphasizes 10 areas of judgment: architecture, market viability, engineering, lighting design, communications, comfort zone, hot water, appliances, home entertainment and net metering. This year's 20 participating teams traveled from universities around the country and the world. The Show-Me team is the only American team to have participated every year since 2002.
For more than a year, MU students have been traveling to and from Rolla, where the house is located, to design and work on the home. Although the Missouri S&T students worked on the house from an engineering standpoint, MU students planned the architectural and interior design aspects of the house.
"This project was full of a number of challenges, I think that the most obvious was trying to get two teams in two different cities on the same page," Show-Me Solar team President Jacquie McDermott-Kelty said.
The varying location of students wasn't the only factor that proved challenging.
"The downturn in the economy was also an obstacle for us," McDermott-Kelty said. "When we started the project we had grand ideas about what we could get donated for the house, but when it came down to it we had to edit some of those ideas. However, we did luck out and were able to get some wonderful donations for the project from companies that we're less affected by the economy early on."
Every team member had specialized responsibilities and skills, including communication with Rolla, meeting leadership, designing both the exterior and interior, lighting design, fundraising and publicity, McDermott-Kelty said.
After an open house in both Rolla and Columbia, which included a visual tour, the house made its way to Washington to be prepared for competition. Besides the goal of getting the house up and running before competition, the team hopes to gain something from its competitors.
"We are also hoping to learn from the other teams, it's interesting to see what they have done and how that works," McDermott-Kelly said. "Sometimes it helps us decide what we can or cannot do in the future. It is also very important to us that we educate the public about solar design, we want people to ask questions and challenge us."
According to the Solar Decathlon's Web site, the houses will be open to the public from Oct. 9 to 13 and Oct. 15 to 18, with the contests taking place from Oct. 8 to 16.
"I hope that this project will reflect the MU community's interest in sustainable efforts on a more national level," Co-Fundraising Chairwoman Heather Benson said. "Also raising more awareness in the community of what students are doing to help improve the way we live. We are already planning our 2011 Solar House with Rolla and hope that more students will get involved with the overall process and want to be a part of it."
