Five Sunbelt Competitors
Five Sunbelt teams converge nature and technology
by Vanessa Camozzi
American University Interactive Journalism Program
Fall 2007
Photo by Vanessa Camozzi
Texas A&M senior Rebecca Rangel
talks about her teams’ “Reflection
Pond” and its purpose.
WASHINGTON, D.C.–The Solar Decathlon is a competition in which twenty teams of college and university students from all around the globe, compete to design, build, and operate the most attractive, effective, and energy-efficient solar powered house.
Teams from the Sunbelt region competing this year are: The University of Texas at Austin, Texas A&M, Georgia Institute of Technology, University of Colorado at Boulder, and Santa Clara University in California.
It certainly isn’t easy to make these houses both beautiful on the outside and structurally sound. But these Sunbelt teams did just that.
Four out of the five Sunbelt teams competing in this Solar Decathlon placed in the top ten. Santa Clara University ranked highest in third place, followed by Georgia Institute of Technology at sixth place, University of Colorado at Boulder placed seventh, University of Texas came rounded in at number ten, and Texas A&M placed seventeenth.
Photo by Vanessa Camozzi
Director of the Solar Decathlon, Richard
King talks about what happens to the teams’
houses after the competition.
Agustin Fonts, an architecture student from Santa Clara University talks about the troubles his team encountered during the contest –the teams’ transport truck broke an axle and delayed them in the competition by three days.
“We don’t have our house here yet, but we’re not too worried in the sense that we’ll have it up and running, we know everything works,” Fonts says.
Santa Clara wasn’t suppose to compete this year, they were number twenty-one on the list, but scored the opportunity to enter the contest when another
California University team had to drop out.
University of Colorado at Boulder was the team to beat because of their track record. They have won the past two Solar Decathlons. Though they didn’t take first place in this year’s competition student Sean Hauze says “The competition has stepped up a lot this year, it’s interesting to see everyone’s house–it’s a big learning experience.”
Georgia Institute of Technology placed a great emphasis on light and bringing light into the house in unique ways. These new innovative ideas and material helped them grab sixth place in the competition.
Photo by Vanessa Camozzi
Santa Clara University’s house
ranked highest of the Sunbelt Teams
placing third in this years Decathlon.
This was the third time competing for the University of Texas at Austin. They attract lots of attention towards their aesthetically appealing house by placing a big orange tub or “The Dutch Tub” as they refer to it, on their front porch. They also use an abstract of an agave plant for the outside of their house making sure this Texas house does not go unrecognized. The other Texas school, Texas A&M, mirrored UT’s aesthetics approach by placing a large “Reflection Pond” in front of their house. This teams concept was modularity and flexibility. The A&M “groHome” concept is based on interchangeable and interconnected “groWall” units.
“This groWall system will help for future generations with problems like what we had in Katrina, and Mississippi, if people lose their homes this is a very affordable way, an easy way to get a home very fast and with everything that they need. In addition to that it’s growable so you can get as many cores as you want and attach more groWalls depending on how big your family is,” says graduate student Eduardo Ramirez.
While Team Germany took the top honors for this event scoring an impressive 1024.85 overall average (based on a 1200 scale point system), all of the teams hard-work and energy will continue to educate the public about solar technologies and its capabilities. Many of the houses will be transported back to their respective schools’ campus where they will be showcased and used for research and development.
Listen to the audio story