ICON Univ of MN Solar Decathlon enty: crane lowers a section of roof onto the University of Minnesota's Icon House, which arrived on the Mall Oct. 2. The house arrived several days late because of transport difficulties.Courtesy Richard King/U.S. Department of Energy
I hope to one day live in a house that produces more energy than it uses. A competition between 20 such houses is going on right now on the Mall in Washington DC. The Solar Decathlon joins 20 college and university teams in a competition to design, build, and operate the most attractive and energy-efficient solar-powered house. Points awarded in ten categories determine the overall winner. As of today (Mon) we have climbed up to 7th place(click for most recent rankings).
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I have been excitedly working my way through information as it comes in. You can follow a umn_solar_house Twitter feed and there is an ICON Facebook fan page. The Solar Decathalon landing page allows you to jump to photos, videos, and team websites(not working? Try the site map). The University of Minnesota's ICON landing page branches off into a blog, a virtual tour, and lots of educational pages about design. The media (WCCO News and Washington Post) and bloggers (myself included) will be all over this. I recommend GetEnergySmartNow.com's cheat sheet and their overview of the UMN ICON house. You can also download a 966KB PDF media kit about the Solar Decathlon.
The Univ of MN ICON design was chosen for the photo in today's New York Times article about solar living.
The Minnesota team jumped from 7th to 5th place. Two days to go.
Here is a great photo of 8 of the Solar Decathlon houses (MN upper left).
The Minnesota team took first place in the lighting division. Also, here is a link to what Popular Mechanics said about their ICON solar home.
MN gets best in engineering
It's good to know that our engineering students can out perform the Gopher football team!!!
ya because alot of people have alot of energy that they can use for inpoortant causes
i really think that we should build more solar power sytems in our area!
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