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Go to the teams site e.g. http://www.solardecathlon.org/2009/team_germany.cfm
On the bottom right are the zip files. They contain the complete technical drawings.

What more do you want? If you want to build the exact same thing, you'll probably still need an architect. But hey, you also need a IT guy for installing bind.

Cool, on page 419 they describe how they moved the house from Darmstadt to Washington DC. So that's your blueprint for stealing it!

At current recovery rates and tech level, yes, but that will get better, there's more there, and they are still finding big fields elsewhere, like the recent big gulf discovery..and who knows what they have squirreled away in the arctic, either known about and kept secret, or still to be found.

    Combined with more efficient vehicles,(a LOT more efficient, it's possible today with bog standard today's tech, every place BUT the US has a much wider choice of better mileage vehicles) and electric vehicles, and using what petroleum we have in blends with advanced biofuels, we could get by on a reduced petroleum supply load for even longer.

    And telecommuting, a few tens of billion in better data infrastructure could eliminate the need for hundreds of billions worth in commuting costs and pollution., which is cheaper and easier, transporting some electrons, or millions of meat sacks in heavy steel boxes twice a day?

    Giant office towers that are there just so folks can sit in front of a computer screen are *rather wasteful*, when folks can stay home and sit in front of a computer screen. All that commuting and having to keep those huge buildings running, proly 3/4ths wasted right there just because a lot of these companies haven't had the right incentive (that would be clubs to the head to get them to wake up) and cut loose from the Ebenezer Scrooge and Bob Cratchitt 1700s mentality of the necessity of BEING at the office all the time, and make better use of the tech we have now and enter the 21st century. Plus think of the sheer millions of man hours that could be saved not riding in a car or bus or train or even a dang bicycle back and forth and back and forth and back and forth to work.

We can go a long ways to dropping petroleum (and coal and natgas and..) demand without sacrificing any cool modern way of life, just by doing things smarter instead oif perpetuating obsolete tech because a few already rich people can skim so much profit from it. Heck, we could probably get by with very few new powerplants if they adjusted building codes (and mortgage loan approvals) to require a lot more insulation. The bulk of our electricity use is heating and cooling, and I know that this demand/requirement level can be dropped drastically, I used to be in that biz for a while, retrofitting for more energy efficiency.

    You can read a scosh about it here, superinsulation. It's amazing, you got to see it to believe it almost. You can get some serious savings by just *using* tech that has already been developed decades ago. It ain't sexy for wallstreet skimmers and gamblers that much, so it isn't pushed "in the market" as it could be, or for academic wanking research, but it IS possible. No new nuthin needs to be invented or funded by vulture capitalists or needs "government studies". Just double or triple our generic 50s and 60s level insulation that exists in millions of homes and buildings, along with a few other tweaks like better windows and doors and so on, and you'd be surprised how that works out for the electric bill.

    Easy enough done with a simple one page legislative bill and decent and credible sized tax credits, extended for some years. It could create a million new and actually *useful* jobs and save hundreds of billions in energy costs and dramatically reduce air pollution. But no one big company could get a monopoly on it, not a lot of patents to troll with, etc, so it ain't pushed, and dang sure the energy companies don't push it, cuts directly into the ole bottom line there. Lip service at best, they push what I would term 1/4 ass efforts, not even half assed. And they call that "good cents". I call it deliberate misdirection and marketing propaganda.

You want to see what really could be accomplished today, with both housing and transportation, check out some of the designs at the solar decathlon competition.

We have energy demand, and energy production, two different things. We can still do a *lot* more to reduce demand and not just fixate on the production part (this is also the main article point). If you had ever been inside a superinsulated home you would know what I am talking about (I have helped build and retrofit a few). It is quite conceivable and has been proven that-for instance- you can take a normal stick frame residential home and drop its energy demands for heating and cooling down to like 10-20% of what they are now, using off the shelf already proven technology, that in the medium and long run has a spiffy return on investment from reduced utility bills. This reduction in demand (along with better built and designed appliances) would greatly help to eliminate the need for all those coal to electricity plants in the first place, we can just shut them down and not have to deal with storing any co2 then, which then also makes the addition of home solar thermal and PV much cheaper, as you don't need as much production to get to what you still need to run the home. This same concept applies to both small houses all the way to large buildings.

An interesting venue to see some of this tech is in the solar decathlon contests that are held. They even design homes that are not only capable of being self powered, but also produce enough extra power to keep an electric vehicle charged up for the daily commute.

The main point is fixating on the production side is what wall street wants because it is big ticket profit central, whereas if we shifted emphasis to energy efficiency it would be a lot cheaper for society as a whole and give much larger and more immediate returns to just about everyone, and there really isn't a whole lot of "new" stuff that needs to be invented or developed to accomplish this. It won't make wall street and those casino banks and the entrenched energy cartels as much money though, so they tend to just "forget" about energy efficiency and push just more energy production. *Most* buildings today are still in the energy hog SUV type of mileage area for their energy demands if you want a car analogy, so a practical solution becomes easier to see once you grok this.

  The easiest quickest way to accomplish this would be by the use of credible and large tax credits for energy efficiency retrofits (this would also put a ton of builders back to work), and then additional credits for decentralized energy production like home solar.

You can save considerable doing your solar install if you do the bulk of the work yourself. I mean a lot, I wouldn't be surprised at all if anything you got quoted was like 40% labor. There's only a few parts that require a licensed electrician. (I have helped put in two big systems and did all of my own small system) As to your current electric bill, unless you have a signed contract from your supplier guaranteeing the price you pay now for the next 30 years, you can't compare it to a solar install which does give you such a contract. You can hope your bill won't go up drastically, but that's about it.

As to your car, good luck. Get a diesel that gets good mileage, or one of the better gasoline cars from the 80s that get better mileage than even hybrids now. I got a smallish diesel (pickup) last year used for really cheap, although it is a rat, it was the best I could find in my area for sale. My next project though will be pure electric (another small pickup, I'll do a conversion) for local driving into town, (I don't have to commute so once a week is fine, 40 mile range is fine, and I will keep it charged from my existing solar panels) then I will put a fuel generator in a trailer or in the bed (maybe, batteries suck down the weight)for longer trips. That solves the range problem quite easily, plus, having a decent generator is good back up emergency power for your home anyway, just a good thing to have.

As to rebates or tax credits, too many variables state to state to say yes or no, but the feds still have a 2 grand tax credit. Not a lot, but at least it beats nothing. Do a google search and check your individual state, they really vary a lot, some are quite generous. but heck ya I think we should have them, much better tax credits would get solar adopted faster and help with the overall long range energy issues, plus home installations are decentralized, meaning we don't need to expand the existing expensive powergrid network.

The cheapest way to start to go alternative energy is to drop demand. Sounds weird, but just getting really good energy efficient appliances and making sure your home is more than adequately insulated, etc, helps a lot.

Personally though I draw the line at compact fluorescents, I detest them things. I am holding out for cheaper LED lighting. We save in other ways like we get by without expensive AC here in georgia because we picked out our little cabin because it sits under really decent shade meaning we can get by with a few window fans and it has it's own water supply from a well, we have a woodstove hookup and that is our primary heat, and the huge garden spot cuts the food bills drastically, that and we raise our own beef. Nothing like "locally sourced" for a lot of your day to day necessities to cut the bills!

If you want to look at examples of self powered homes that also power the family car, just for some ideas and they are cool anyway, you can check out this for some working examples.

There are two more technologies that are here and now and if implemented on very large scales would do more than a lot of the other alternatives, and those are geothermal and superinsulation techniques. Ground loop geothermal *works*, and works well, as does superinsulation. I've worked on several superinsulation projects and the results are quite simply fantastic. It's not sexy or gee whizz new tech, just using old tech smarter, it doesn't produce any more energy, but dollar for dollar it has everything else out there beat, hands down. You can spend the big bucks producing more power just to waste it, or small to medium bucks and save a bundle..forever, the life of the building. If building codes and mortgage approvals were altered to reflect that, for new construction and for title transfers, we could drop demand every year for a long time.

Besides that I agree with you, the solution is "all of the above as fast as possible" right now. I think the US could do good by making with the 100% tax credits for alternative energy and insulation projects for at least the next decade, and not wait for 150 to 200 buck a barrel oil to think about that. Not partial credits or deductions, 100%, with multi year carry-overs. The increase in practical and useful non burger flipping jobs and industries on one side will offset the tax in one place and replace it in another, so the net would be a wash dollar wise, but we'd all wind up with a ton of "free stuff", good energy and conservation measures, great for the nation, great for your personal wallet, so what's not to like? Energy independence is a good goal. Drop demand the same time you increase and diversify production, eventually you hit that magic sweet spot of independence, from there on out it's gravy. But ya, we can't keep farting around studying it and waiting for the mysterious mr. fusion to arrive, that's just silly, we can go with what we have now just fine, it is plenty good enough. There are millions of roofs out there facing south doing nothing more than rotting shingles. Plenty of backyards could get the ditchwitch action and have the groundloops installed. and etc. Solar thermal air heating and water heating are old tech now, work just fine and are cheap really.

      The computers ten years from now will be much better, but they are still good enough now to use them and not wait ten years to get one. Same deal really. The future got here, it is the 21st century, time to start acting like it.

    For some examples of the complete self powered homes plus car, look to the latest solar decathlon winners for some ideas.

The consensus among a lot of the architectural and green-building community, as well as a long-term goal of the US Department of Energy, is residential solar. It doesn't take that much roof space to generate enough power for a home, and it is totally viable. The DOE, and their National Renewable Energy Labs have been sponsoring a competition for universities around the country to design, build and compete against each other with 100% solar powered houses. It's called the Solar Decathlon, and it's an incredible event. The last one, in October 2005, drew over, 100,000 people (picture) to the National Mall in Washington, DC.

I'd recommend taking a look. (Full disclosure: I'm on Cornell University's team).