SOURCE: Green Builder Media
DESCRIPTION:The Solar Decathlon, a biennial event sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), is a good place to look for inspiration and innovation. The inaugural Solar Decathlon was 2002 on the National Mall; the latest and seventh competition was held in Irvine, Calif. this past October.
This was Stevens Institute of Technology’s third Solar Decathlon competition. This year, the team took the legacy of Hurricane Sandy into account, asking, “How can we design a home that both reduces energy use and adapts to the realities of a changing more extreme climate?”
The team’s winning answer is the SURE (SUstainable and REsilient) HOUSE, a high-performance solar-powered house, not only armored to take weather extremes but prepared with a source of emergency power in the aftermath of a storm.
The two-bedroom SURE HOUSE is 999 square feet. In style, it is a midcentury modern beach house, but it sips energy à la the 21st century and is storm ready.
KEYWORDS: Energy, Energy Efficiency, Solar Decathlon, DOE, Department of Energy, Green Builder Media, SURE House, resilient housing
