Students selected for Solar Decathlon competition

A team of West Virginia University students has been selected to compete in the 2013 Solar Decathlon, and construct a solar-powered, environmentally friendly house.

The competition, hosted by the U.S. Department of Energy, will take place in the Orange County Great Park in Irvine, Calif., and award a $100,000 grant to each of the 20 teams participating in the Decathlon. Each team presented a research proposal and blueprint of their house, and will construct the house in the park for display and judging.

Kenneth Hite, graduate electrical engineering student and WVU Solar House president, said the project is still in the design phase and is open for student feedback to develop the house.

"The first thing we've decided to do is hold open forums," Hite said. "We want to get students and community members in the same room and get the ideas flowing for the design process, and start pushing the design process forward."

The team has developed its design project to combine the latest smart-home technology and energy efficient systems into a log-cabin style home, called the Preserving Energy with Appalachian Knowledge project, or PEAK. The design is the first log home to be accepted into the Solar Decathlon competition.

Hite said the competition was expecting more than 500,000 visitors in 2013, and the team is currently working to collect building materials and develop sponsors for the project.

"We're researching materials now and working on getting sponsors for the materials," Hite said. "Solar panels, solar hot water collectors, construction materials – anything that's needed to build a house."

Brian Neff, executive vice president of the project, said the Solar House project has student and faculty participants from every college in the University, and is recruiting members to continue to promote the project.

"We're still recruiting as many people as possible," Neff said. "It takes more than a core of 30 people to build a house; it takes the support of a whole community and a whole University to get this thing off the ground."

This will be the first time WVU has participated in the competition, which was established in 2002.

The competition is divided into 10 contests designed to measure the environmental impact and livability of each house. Each contest will evaluate a variety of home features, including architecture, market appeal, appliances and home entertainment.

In order to be considered a viable entry, each house must produce as much or more energy than it consumes. The maximum budget for each house is $250,000.

Neff said the project started two years ago with a small group of engineering students, and he is proud of the progress the team has made in the design and promotion of PEAK.

"It absolutely feels amazing to know that two years of work has finally paid off," Neff said. "It may have been disheartening to build this 30-page proposal and not be accepted, but now that we know we're up to the task, we can accept the challenge wholeheartedly. It's brand new, it's something we've never done before, and we're all excited about it."