The Solar Decathlon: Housing’s Bright Spot
Teams design and build homes powered by the sun
This past October, taking a walk on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., might have been more like taking a walk into the future. Twenty solar-powered homes were sprawled across the mall’s west end, transforming it from a park into something that resembled an innovative new housing development. Park purists take note: the transformation was only temporary. The homes were part of a competition.
“The Solar Decathlon is a competition for university schools of engineering and architecture to design, from the ground up, a solar-powered, high efficiency, self-sustaining house,” says Solar Decathlon Director Richard King.