As published earlier on this blog, many Midwest universities and colleges joined others from around the world in Washington, D.C. for the past several weeks to compete in ‘solar-heated’ competition, if you will.  For many months the students and professors designed and built there houses to be extremely energy efficient and utilize renewable energy.  The contest had 1000 possible points unevenly distributed over 10 areas that the judges would scrutinize.  Each team had only a matter of days to assemble their largely prefabricated structures and make them operational.

The winners of the 2007 Decathlon continued their success.  ‘Team Germany’ from Technische Universität Darmstadt won the ‘Net Metering’ category, worth 150 points, compared to the other nine categories which were either 75 or 100, by covering their relatively huge house with photovoltaic panels.  They also won the ‘Comfort Zone’ trial.

Despite winning more categories, ‘Appliances’, ‘Home Entertainment’, and ‘Hot Water’, the team from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign came in a close second, just 11 points behind with their Gable House.

The team from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette won the ‘Market Viability’ category as well as the People’s Choice Award for their BeauSoleil Home.

This was the fourth competition in the past 8 years.  Most of the schools have been participating since the beginning.  You can still find continued updates about the Solar Decathlon on their Twitter page, their Facebook Fan Site, and their Youtube channel.  Applications for the 2011 Solar Decathlon are now being accepted, good luck to all contestants!