Random Walk
House of the Powering Sun
The house of tomorrow won’t just be green—it’ll be smart. At least that’s how students at Caltech and the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) envision it. For over a year, the joint SCI-Arc/Caltech team has been designing and building its vision: a state-of-the-art, energy-efficient house for the Solar Decathlon.
Sponsored by the Department of Energy, the biennial competition challenges 20 teams from around the world to create the most energy-efficient, affordable, and attractive house possible. The teams will be judged on 10 “events,” in each of which the house has to perform certain tasks, such as heating 15 gallons of water in less than 10 minutes. The houses also have to cost less than $350,000 for the consumer. The competition will take place from September 23 to October 2 on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., providing a high-profile venue intended to inspire policymakers, industry leaders, and the public to pursue a sustainable future.
Designed for use in the urban landscape of Southern California, the SCI-Arc/Caltech house is full of energy-saving features. The exterior is covered with a soft, insulating “skin” of white architectural vinyl, making the building somewhat resemble a giant pillow. The house is entirely powered by solar panels, and plentiful windows make artificial lighting during the day unnecessary. Waste heat produced by the air-conditioning unit generates hot water and provides warmth at night. “This is a simple idea that makes a lot of sense, but hasn’t yet been done in a residential setting,” says Richard Wang, a senior majoring in mechanical engineering who is spearheading Caltech’s side of the project. The key aspect that sets this house apart from other Decathlon entries, he says, is that the team based every design choice on rigorous theoretical and computer models of how a house works. The team is installing and testing its designs this summer.
The next challenge will be transporting the entire house to Washington, D.C. The house consists of four modules that will sit on flatbed trailers and be pulled by trucks across the country. When everything arrives on the Mall just before the competition, cranes will piece the modules together like a jigsaw puzzle. One of only two houses in the competition with two stories, the SCI-Arc/Caltech design boasts a spacious interior, despite an area of only 800 square feet. (Contest rules limit the area to between 600 and 1,000 square feet.) The four modules’ open interiors become a single, roomy structure, providing comfort that turns a house into a home, says Fei Yang, also a senior majoring in mechanical engineering and another student leader. In many of the other designs, he says, the modules remain separate, looking like trailers. “I don’t care how pretty your trailer is,” he remarks. “It’s still a trailer.”
The house’s brains are an off-the-shelf computer called Control4, which controls everything from appliances to heating. The computer keeps track of the house’s energy balance, making the necessary adjustments to ensure net-zero energy use—that the house consumes no more power than it produces—over the course of the competition. Future residents can set the washer to have their laundry done by Sunday, and the machine will turn on when it’s efficient and cheap to do so—at night after a sunny Saturday afternoon, for example. They can even use their iPad as a remote.
They will always be able to override the computer, so there’s no worry of the house becoming self-aware and turning into HAL, the homicidal machine from 2001: A Space Odyssey. “Our house is not meant to control your life, but to help you live your life,” says Yang. All the fancy technology in the world won’t make a greener globe unless people change how they live, he says.
Because people living in the SCI-Arc/Caltech house will be able to monitor their energy efficiency in real time, they can adjust their behavior accordingly—a phenomenon sometimes known as the Prius effect, in which drivers of the hybrid car alter their driving styles to improve mileage. The team is trying to maximize this effect by considering such notions as installing “mood lights” that change color depending on energy consumption.
The team is also working on lights that can be dimmed or switched on and off with just simple gestures. But despite the high-tech wizardry, the house of a greener future is closer to realization than you think, Wang says. “The Solar Decathlon—and our house in particular—is standing proof that affordable, beautiful net-zero houses are already here.” —MW
The full-sized mock-up of the SCI-Arc/Caltech Solar Decathlon house is partially covered in a soft, insulated “skin” of architectural vinyl.
