Engineers picked for solar house contest

By Megan O'Connor

Three months and $600,000 behind, Santa Clara engineers are competing in an international race to build a solar-powered house.

The team of engineers must build a house that is energy efficient, running completely on solar power, but still attractive.

Santa Clara is one of 20 schools from around the world -- and the only West Coast school -- competing in the third annual Solar Decathlon, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy.

Initially, it didn't look like Santa Clara would be participating at all. The Department of Energy ranked the 160 schools that applied, picking the top 20 for the competition. Santa Clara was 21st.

But in the spring, the deciding announcement came. Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, last year's third place finisher, was out.

"When I first heard about it, I got goose-bumps that we got in," junior civil engineer Raymond Lam said. "I was just super-excited."

This is Santa Clara's first time in the decathlon. They are competing against the likes of Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, MIT and the University of Colorado, which won the past two competitions in 2002 and 2005.

The goal of the competition is to show that solar power is a viable energy source. Each student team must build a self-sustaining, solar-powered house. The teams must generate enough electricity to compete in tasks, earning points which determine a winner.

The teams compete in 10 tasks, with titles such as appliances, comfort zone or getting around. Tasks range from cooking and serving meals for four days to charging an electric car overnight using the house's energy and gaining points by how many miles they can drive it for afterwards.

The culmination of the decathlon is a public exhibition of all the houses on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. During the 2005 competition, the houses were open for 11 days and received about 120,000 visitors, according to the Solar Decathlon Web site. The decathlon has been covered in The New York Times and The Washington Post.

"Students need to understand how much this will affect Santa Clara's reputation," said Lam. "It will bring Santa Clara nation-wide publicity."

Because of the late start, the current focus for the team is fundraising. They need to raise $600,000 before they finish the project. "Being a small school could affect us with fundraising," Lam said.

Santa Clara is adapting the preliminary sketch of the house originally created by Cal Poly's school of architecture. They were given the design by Cal Poly following its withdrawal from the competition.

The decathlon also gives engineers an opportunity to innovate. The team is developing new uses of environmentally sustainable materials in the house. They debuted bamboo structural supports at the Wired NextFest on Sept. 29 in New York City.

Lam said the bamboo support project is one of the most intense for the engineering team because of its innovative nature. Lam said because bamboo has not been used before, it had to be approved for use by competition officials.

Lam and faculty advisor Mark Aschheim spent the summer conducting tests on the supports to ensure they could pass a strength requirement and be approved for use in the house construction.

The use of bamboo in structural supports originated at Santa Clara as part of a past civil engineering student's senior design project. Lam said bamboo represents the California-green attitude.

Construction for the house will begin in January, junior James Bickford said.

The house will be built on the location of the old baseball batting cages next to Buck Shaw Stadium. Bickford was unsure if students would carry out construction work, or if they would hire private contractors.

In fall 2007, Santa Clara will move the house to the National Mall at what will be called "the solar village." The house is designed to be shipped as a whole and fit on the back of a flatbed truck, Bickford said.

Bickford said the decathlon is about more than just winning.

"If we want to be here in a thousand years we need to figure out a way to live more sustainingly," Bickford said.

Contact Megan O'Connor at (408) 554-4546 or moconnor@scu.edu.