Solar Powered Homes

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/science/10/08/eco.solar.decathlon/index.html

Solar Power is gaining in popularity every year. People all over the world are starting to see the capability of using our most plentiful resource for our demanding energy needs. They are realizing this so much that they now have an international Solar Decathlon going on. There are teams all over the world participating in this event. Each team is building a completely solar powered house and competing for which one is the most efficient. There are teams from Puerto Rico, Germany, Spain, and all over the United States. A team from Santa Clara University in California told CNN all about this competition. This team is a bit different from many other teams participating in this event because all the students on the team are undergraduates. They have been working on their home for two years and have put in over 67,000 man hours in their solar home. They call their project the Refract House. They even have a motto, “Green Living Is Not a Compromise.” They designed their house differently than others because they stayed away from the box style house and tried to make the solar panels on the roof look more like a natural roof. They also designed an iPhone application that can turn electrical circuits off and on in the house when they don’t need them. This competition is strictly supervised; they watch how much hot water is produced by the solar panels and all sorts of different energy applications. This is the forefront of what is to come in the future with solar energy.

After reading this article, it helped me realize how abundant the sun is. It also made me think that we really need to figure out how to harness power from it even if it is very expensive. I belief the money spent will be well worth it in the long run.

I reacted this way because I’m in the electrical distributing industry. I think that what these students are doing with energy efficient houses will make it easier to understand what kind of payoff someone could have by investing in some solar panels for their home. It might be a large investment at first, but an investment that will surely payoff in the years ahead.

The ideas used and designed by this team from California and the rest of the competitors should help open our eyes to what future opportunities we will have with the use of solar energy.