Introduction to the Solar Decathlon
Chris here, I’ve just got back from the Solar Decathlon in Washington, DC. The US Department of Energy hosts the Solar Decathlon every two years. This year, 20 university teams from around the world competed in 10 categories to produce solar-powered homes. Embedded Automation‘s mControl was used by Cornell and Team North. Additionally, my company, VerTech Solution, is using mControle to develop a specific application that controls Team North‘s North House.
It was an incredible experience working with the team, dealing with the control challenges, and seeing our house compete on the Mall. In the coming days, there will be several blog topics to cover different aspects of the project, lessons learned, and experiences. There is much to cover, er, and I hope to deal with many different aspects.
The house has now returned to Ontario. But we are really hoping that the North House will be shipped to Vancouver for the Olympics. There is an effort underway, but the final decision has not been made. Let’s hope that the effort is successful!
I’m hoping that the house comes to Vancouver not only to act as a showpiece, but also so that we can continue to improve the controls and performance. Solar Decathlon was really the start; there is so much more we can do.
As I strolled the mall, I was struck by the diversity of the entries, both physically (the Cornell house is made from several recycled metal slats) and in terms of the systems used.
Part of the reason for the differences is that the houses targeted different climates, typically that where the university was located. But other differences were the result of innovations developed by the respective teams. For instance, one house used a desiccant to remove water from the air before it entered the HVAC system. This simple technique improved the HVAC performance by about 50%.
The North House employed external venetian blinds for temperature control, and this will be the subject of a coming blog entry.
There were a lot of amazing innovations. So stay tuned to this blog as I cover several of the more interesting ones.
