BeauSoleil: Dress Rehearsal

photos: Philip Gould

Solar Decathlon Update: Every two years 20 university teams are chosen, based on proposals, to design an all-solar home and assemble it on the National Mall in Washington DC for public viewing and judging. Check back each Wednesday as the NAV Blog reports on the process of the design and construction of BeauSoleil, the University of Louisiana at Lafayette's entry. For more info about the project, visit their website. And check out a short film about the project.



A couple of images by photographer Philip Gould depict the BeauSoleil home set up in Lafayette and "ready to go."

Th all-solar home is now en route to DC. I'll be stepping up the coverage over the next few weeks as TEAM BeauSoleil puts down roots on the National Mall.

Green Homes for New Orleans' Ninth Ward

Image by William McDonough + Partners


In New Orleans, Brad Pitt's initiative - Make It Right Homes - is refitting the devastated 9th Ward with an interesting collection of affordable green homes. Four years after the storm, several units are finished and occupied, more are under construction, and still more are on the way.

Pitt's organization managed to obtain the services of some of the country's leading green architects to design MIR prototypes including this one by architect William McDonough.

McDonough seems to have come out of the womb thinking green. His influential book Cradle to Cradle has proven to be somewhat of a manifesto for sustainable design. In the book, he and coauthor Michael Braungart promote the idea that "waste equals food" introducing to a wide audience the concept that products can be designed for infinite uses in a closed loop life cycle.

His early claim to fame was the design of a solar house built in Ireland in 1977. New Orleans has considerably more sun than Ireland; you guessed it - this home is equipped with a rooftop of PV panels.

Some very nice work is going on here, but given the huge demand for affordable housing in the Katrina affected zone, it's just a drop in the proverbial bucket. But the ideas generated in the process - many experimental - are the real power of this initiative. How this plays out will influence far more than the Ninth Ward, I predict.

Click on this link for detailed renderings and plans of William McDonough's green duplex prototype.

And for some "on the ground" reporting on the new MIR homes, check out this link from Lira Luis' blog. Lira is a former Taliesin apprentice and uber-creative architect in her own right.

Solar Power. Warning: Not for Dummies

This summer at the MREA Energy Fair, one of my goals was to find the best new manual on residential photovoltaic design out there.

Pickings were actually much slimmer than I had anticipated; you'd think that with the ascent of renewable energies lately there would be a flood of new books on the market. Wrong.

Surprisingly, after asking around, recommendations for this book kept popping up: Solar Power Your Home for Dummies.

Normally, I stay as far away from "For Dummies" books as I possibly can. (The dummy-themed titles always seemed to me to be a bit condescending.) But when one insistent vendor assured me that "no dummies have ever read this book," I acquiesced. And I'm very glad I did.

Rik DeGunther infuses a healthy dose of wit with a mountain of concise, digestable information about the different types of PV systems, practical advice on selection and installation, and a good many helpful charts and illustrations. It's a cut-to-the-chase reference manual for professionals and, at the same time, is written in a way that newbies to solar energy can understand. Companion volumes (which, full disclosure, I have not read) include Alternative Energy for Dummies and Energy Efficient Homes for Dummies.

DeGunther is an engineer, product designer, writer, and apparently has an affinity for loud guitars. In addition to his books - including a golf manual on the mechanics of putting - DeGunther is a weekly columnist for the Mountain Democrat newspaper.

I did not include a link to the book on Amazon.com in this post. (You can find it in about 3 seconds.) But in the spirit of sustainability, why not buy locally, and support your neighborhood independent bookstore.

BeauSoleil: Completion in Site

Solar Decathlon Update: Every two years 20 university teams are chosen, based on proposals, to design an all-solar home and assemble it on the National Mall in Washington DC for public viewing and judging. Check back each Wednesday as the NAV Blog reports on the process of the design and construction of BeauSoleil, the University of Louisiana at Lafayette's entry. For more info about the project, visit their website. And check out a short film about the project.



Geoff Gjertsen, architect and faculty adviser for TEAM BeauSoleil, reports that progress is moving along nicely and on schedule for an August 24th roll-out.

There's an old saying in architecture: The last 10% takes 90% of the effort - an exaggeration under most circumstances, but no doubt there will be a flurry of activity over the next three weeks.

This is crunch time.

BeauSoleil: In a Winter Wonderland

Snow in Lafayette Louisiana on mock-ups of the BeauSoleil Home's solar roof panels.

Rare sight?

Or Climate Change?

BeauSoleil: PV Panel Update

Solar Decathlon Update: Every two years 20 university teams are chosen, based on proposals, to design an all-solar home and assemble it on the National Mall in Washington DC for public viewing and judging. Check back each Wednesday as the NAV Blog reports on the process of the design and construction of BeauSoleil, the University of Louisiana at Lafayette's entry. For more info about the project, visit their website at http://www.beausoleilhome.org/. And check out short film about the project here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsuziBrNeO4


Report from the field: Last time I wrote we had just finished an 8’ by 13’ mockup of the roof. Last week we built a rack out of unistrut and installed the PV panels on the mockup. It went so smoothly it’s as if unistrut was made to be a PV rack system. We hope to begin testing the PV’s early next week at the latest. It always feels good to step away from the computer and build something. I can’t wait to see the system up and running.

We are testing two types of inverters: macro and micro. We are most excited about the micro inverters because they are new technology. Each PV has its own micro inverter that converts the DC power to AC right there at the panel. This is supposed to be more efficient and safer due to the elimination of long high voltage DC runs. Using the micro inverters would also free up some space in our 800 square foot house.

Our hot water mockup literally had a few kinks to iron out but we got it to work and we are confident the actual system will work as well. A mechanical engineering student will be helping us with the final design, as he is better with thermodynamics and fluid dynamics than the rest of us.

M and E Consulting, a local engineering firm, will be donating our dehumidifier, which we are thrilled about. Because the BeauSoleil Louisiana Solar Home is essentially a large ice chest we will need a dehumidifier to introduce outside air as well as remove humidity from the respiration of the occupants, washing dishes, etc. We are using a 2 ton mini-split ductless HVAC system for conditioning the air though we think it will not need to run very much due to the high R-values of our SIPS walls and roof and the fact that the system is oversized.

Plumbing and electrical are coming along and I am learning a lot. The next step is to identify a local company who can fabricate our underfloor storage tanks.

As the due date for our construction documents approaches we are all focusing on getting them done in time. They are just under 50% complete and we hope to be at 65% by the end of the week. In fact, I better get back to it. On behalf of TEAM BeauSoleil have a Happy Thanksgiving!

Scott Chappuis
TEAM BeauSoleil

TEAM BeauSoliel Assembles Roof and Solar Panel Mockups

Solar Decathlon Update: Every two years 20 university teams are chosen, based on proposals, to design an all-solar home and assemble it on the National Mall in Washington DC for public viewing and judging. Check back each Wednesday as the NAV Blog reports on the process of the design and construction of BeauSoleil, the University of Louisiana at Lafayette's entry. For more info about the project, visit their website at http://www.beausoleilhome.org/.

REPORT FROM THE FIELD:

TEAM BeauSoleil has really made progress on our systems designs over the last few days. We completed a mockup of our solar hot water/skylight/shading device design on Monday. Now all we need to do is put it out in the sun and test it.

I probably should go into a little more detail about this hot water/skylight/shading device. The main area of our house will be a transitional porch that can either be exterior or interior space depending on different door configurations. When this porch is being used as an exterior space it will act as a breezeway and help ventilate the interior of the home. Because this is our most celebrated space it has a special translucent roof. Essentially, the entire roof section over the porch will be a skylight during the day and act as a lantern at night when the interior of the home is illuminated. On the south side this skylight will house a closed loop solar hot water heater that we have designed and will build. In order to present more surface area to the sun the collector tubes will have fins attached to them. These fins will double as shading devices in order to prevent heat gain into the house itself. Our design works on paper; the mockup will allow us to test it in the real world.

On Monday, we also finished an 8’ by 13’ mockup of the roof and installed it atop the engineering building. The next step is to attach photovoltaic panels to the metal standing seam and test their performance at different angles and with different inverters. It will also allow us to explore the best method of attaching the PV panels to the metal roof.

In other systems news our HVAC design is almost complete. Plumbing is coming along as well. For the purposes of the Solar Decathlon we have to store all of our own drinking water and wastewater for the length of the competition, which is nearly a month from start to finish. As a result of space restrictions, we will be accomplishing this with tanks that fit under the house and between the floor joists. In some cases these tanks will also be structural. This is a bit of a daunting task so we are still fine-tuning the tank design. We are still tweaking lighting and electrical though we are close to having those nailed down as well.

It has been very encouraging to have built two successful mockups because we can see the fruits of our labor. In addition to mockup testing, the next few weeks will be spent cranking out construction documents, which must be finished in 6 weeks. It is a very busy time for TEAM BeauSoleil right now, but it is a very exciting time as well.

---Scott Chappuis, TEAM BeauSoleil

Solar Power Plants

Solar power plants are starting to pop up in some of the strangest places. This plant located in Germany, a country not known for an overabundance of sunny weather, produces 12 megawatts of electricity - enough to power about 12000 homes.

Germany has in place a healthy program subsidizing the production of solar power in a proactive effort to encourage new household and commercial investment in solar. So does Spain. As a result, those two countries are where most of the new power plants are being constructed and hundreds of thousands of new "green collar" jobs have been created in the process.

Several large-scale solar power plants are in the planning or construction stages in Florida and in the American southwest, mostly in Arizona, California, and Nevada. But there's a catch; the utility companies and project investors are in a "wait and see" mode until Congress decides how it is going to approach energy policy. The current meager incentives are set to expire this year. Not reauthorizing incentives at current levels will doom most of these projects.

Energy legislation was tabled as Congress went into August recess, thus insuring further paralysis for major advancements in solar energy in the United States.

The legislation has been held up by those who insist that we need to open up natural preserves and beach-front property for oil and gas drilling. Those same forces secured billions of dollars in subsidies for oil and gas companies in recent years as a concession for the very limited tax credits for developing and installing alternative energies.

Meanwhile, over dependence on fossil-based fuels at the exclusion of everything else brought us to where we are now. John McCain went down to Louisiana recently to campaign for an American petro-future but they called the trip off at the last minute when a barge spilled oil in the Mississippi the night before the photo opportunity was scheduled. Talk about bad timing (or good timing depending on where you stand).

Arguing for more drilling as an energy policy is like a drug addict insisting that all of his problems would be solved if he just had better access to good heroin.

Call or write your Congressman and Senators and let them know you would like to see more alternative energy tax credits for individuals and businesses. And more funding for research and development of alternative energies would be money well spent.

Here's a list of the largest solar power plants in the world currently in operation.

http://www.pvresources.com/en/top50pv.php

UPDATE:

A New York Times story today breaks news of two new solar power plants planned for California producing a total of 800 megawatts - enough electricity to power almost a million homes.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/15/business/15solar.html?_r=1&ref=business&oref=slogin

Solar Powered Bike Trail

Madison, Wisconsin has long been ahead of the curve when it comes to implementing new ideas.

Recently, I noticed that solar powered night lights have been installed along some of the bike trails flanking University Avenue. This is a double-green solution in that solar power is used to light an environmentally-friendly mode of transportation - biking and walking.

I suspect these fixtures are a little more expensive than conventional fixtures accounting for the panels, batteries, and possibly some specialized low-voltage lamps. Purveyors of fossil-fuel-based energies always like to point out that solar power is more expensive, and in terms of "installation costs" they're usually right.

But here's the powerful part of the equation: the cost of the energy source (that would be the sun) is zero from here on out. No monthly electric bills. No unanticipated market-based price hikes. Expect some maintenance costs on the hardware over the life of the system, but the energy used is free - forever. When you think "life-cycle costs," solar energy is, even today, a great value.

As costs for solar panels and equipment comes down, petroleum and gas prices keep going up making solar more attractive as time goes by.

Do you have any examples of every-day applications for solar energy?

Here Comes the Sun

This week on the New American Village blog:

Solar Energy.

Let the sun shine in.

Solar Village in Freiburg

New “plus energy homes” in Freiburg, Germany’s Vauban district produce more energy than they use.

Since the 1970’s, the city of Freiburg has taken proactive steps to become an eco-friendly city with an ethic of conservation, environmentally-responsible master planning, and development of alternative energies – especially solar.

In 1992, the city council mandated that all new municipal buildings must be “low energy” buildings employing both passive and active solar components. Freiburg’s green ethic goes all the way to the top; the mayor is a member of Bundnis 90/Die Grunen, Germany’s green party.

The Solarsiedlung, or solar village, designed by Freiburg Architect Rolf Disch, is powered by a rooftop solar panel array. Each home is considered a mini power station. Electricity produced by each home feeds into the existing grid contributing a net surplus of power, thus producing revenue for the homeowner.

Hot water is used for heating as well as domestic purposes and comes from solar heated tubes on the roof of an adjacent business park designed by the same Architect.

In the winter months, an on-site heating plant fueled by wood chips supplements the solar hot water heating system.

Rainwater is gathered and utilized for toilets and irrigation. Catching storm water in an urban context helps relieve pressure on the city’s storm water drainage system.

And in any good green building, a whole array of passive measures have been employed such as sun orientation, sunscreens to shade in the summer and let winter sun in, and triple glazing to reduce heat loss.

Natural ventilation is also an integral feature of this new breed of homes – an eternal concept that works as well now as before the days of advanced mechanical systems.

For more on this development, including Sonnenschiff, the solar powered nearby business park and other green urban projects, see the Architect’s website. A link to projects:

http://www.rolfdisch.de/project.asp?sid=-1411551097

Micheal Berk's GreenMobile

Professor Michael Berk has some innovative ideas.

His GreenMobile concept combines sustainability, energy efficiency, affordability, and mobility for a fresh take on green housing. In one clean stroke, this Architect shatters the myth that green costs more. With prices starting at about $50,000, this green home is affordable by most of the American population.

The GreenMobile draws on modular and manufactured home technologies in to create a handsome structure that can be easily transported and set up on-site in short order. Berk’s design is perfect for emergency housing, and even more perfect for the green-conscious, budget-savvy homeowner.

Designed with solar panels and a rainwater collection system, this new breed of home is no slave to the "grid." The GreenMobile can work independently of infrastructure, or as a hybrid-house attached to local utilities. Homebuyers need not depend on the availability of utilities to dictate their choice of home sites.

And keeping the footprint small (a two-bedroom model is 890 square feet, a one-bedroom is 560 square feet) keeps costs in check; the McMansion may have been the fad in the recent past, but modern-day economics is sending too-big houses the way of the dinosaur.

GreenMobile was awarded an almost $6 million grant recently from FEMA's Alternative Housing Pilot Program (part of Congress' post-Katrina relief funding) in an effort to develop a new generation of disaster-relief housing - a good use of taxpayer money, in my opinion. A prototype is currently under development to replace some of the FEMA trailers on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Approximately 80 units are expected to be produced later on this year.

Check out the poster of the GreenMobile’s winning entry in last year’s Lifecycle Building Challenge:

http://www.lifecyclebuilding.org/files/poster-GreenMobile.pdf

And for more information on Professor Michael Berk and GreenMobile development, go to his web site:

http://www.caad.msstate.edu/mberk