I decided to walk home from the courthouse yesterday. It's only about 2 miles. Right next to the courthouse is the National Building Museum. In front of the National Building Museum [link] is a strange looking structure that looks like a mobile home from the year 2350. Virginia Tech is building their entry for the Solar Decathlon on the lawn. I hung out there for about an hour and got the grand tour.
You can check out their design at http://www.solar.arch.vt.edu/.
Unlike most solar houses I've seen in the past, they've done away with the solar heating tubes. On a fixed site they'd use a geothermal system for heating or cooling. Since they're not on a fixed site they've made a cooling tower. The system they have set up will use that, in part, to heat the water as well. I gather that the tower won't work so well in the winter while the geothermal system would.
If you look at the house on their site you'll see these metal screens with holes in them. Currently those are lying on the grass. They will be hung in front of large motorized polycarbonite walls filled with the highly insulating material, Aerogel. The holes in the metal shade screen aren't so much holes as disks that are punched out except for two points. They'll be pushed so they pivot on those points to form a pattern.
These screens are two of several mobile screen layers that can be controlled by an artificial intelligence. They have a weather station outside and several dozen sensors in the house. The AI will use the data from all these points to determine when to open and close the curtains, windows, insulated screens, and adjust the internal lighting. These can be overridden by controls on your iPhone.
They've done to their whole ceiling what I want to do to my kitchen eventually. It's a tightly pulled, translucent white sheet with lighting on the other side so the whole ceiling glows. [link]
The kitchen window is shielded from the low sun when the insulating screens are open. When the sun is high or the screens are closed you flip a switch and the glass slowly turns a dark blue.
The kitchen and living room are at one end, the bathroom is right in the middle with hallways on either side, and the bedroom is at the other end. The bedroom wall that's shared with the bathroom consists of two sliding bookcases. They slide out to act as doors/privacy screens. When pushed aside you can see the TV embedded in the wall behind them.
The kitchen counter comes out revealing the sink and stove underneath. The counter can be pushed aside for use, can go over the kitchen table or over the sofa, or be wheeled out on the deck.
The solar panels move, but only need to once a month.
I can't properly describe the lighting around the bed. Check out the video down below around 6:22.
They have taken a risk in that they're not storing their energy in battery or hydrogen form. In fact they're not storing it at all. Even during the competition they'll be feeding their power into the grid and then feeding off the grid at night.
The students can't sleep in the house when it's on the National Mall next month, but there's no such restriction at it's current location. In fact, the Building Museum people encourage that so that it won't be at risk from thieves and vandals. They don't even have to lock up. They close the screens and there ain't nobody getting in.
There were several people from Siemens there when I came by. They were clearly amazed at what these people had done with their technology.
Go check out the video on their site to see mockups of what I saw. http://www.solar.arch.vt.edu/
You can see more about their theory and design in this video.Joseph Wheeler was the guy who showed me around.
The Solar Decathlon is October 9-18 on the National Mall in Washington, DC.
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