German Team Wins 2009 Solar Decathlon

An anonymous reader writes "Our team recently competed in the 2009 US Department of Energy Solar Decathlon. The Solar Decathlon is a 2-year competition that challenges university students from 20 US and international teams to design, build, and operate the most attractive and energy-efficient solar-powered house. Objective scores are based on comfort control, appliance performance, net-metering, and home entertainment. Subjective contest scores are determined by juries that weigh the engineering design, architectural design, as well as marketing and communication strategies. Team Germany took 1st place due to a large net production of electricity, while Team California claimed top honors in the Architecture contest. Minnesota won the engineering design section. However, looking beyond the contest winners, the main purpose of the event is to raise awareness about solar technology and sustainable design. As part of this campaign, products used in all 20 homes are listed on the DOE website. The most exciting aspect is that the construction and engineering documents and communication materials from all teams are open-sourced for anyone to use or modify!"

Comments

Re:solar

[rolfwind]

Photovoltaic maybe, but solar thermal is wholly ready now and efficient for the average home owner, especially evacuated tubes:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_thermal_collector#Evacuated_tube

A few racks of those on the roof, when coupled with a passive haus, which can be built with 5% cost of a normal house, would probably cover a 95% of normal household's heating/hot_water needs with no major electric/natural_gas/oil backup required, even in the mild climates such as the north-east states:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_house

Even in Canada, there seem to be projects revolving around that type of thing:
http://www.dlsc.ca/how.htm

Photovoltaic is what, 15-30% at best? Solar Thermal can be up to 90% and evacuated tubes are pretty cheap now.

Limp icks

[Velox_SwiftFox]

I'm waiting for the nuclear heptaluge.

Re:Hopefully ...

[drinkypoo]

... they have chosen a proper "IP-format" to avoid patent trolls to grab ideas in order to 'protect' them.

They did, it's called publication. Nothing that YOU can do will prevent the patent office awarding someone else a patent for something you created, but publishing provides strong evidence of prior art. Way to karma whore, though.