by frog
With all the inertia of a slow moving freight train, New Zealand’s entry into the US Department of Energy’s Solar Decathalon is gaining momentum, and should arrive on the mall in Washinton DC by September next year. It seems that people and organisations from around the world are getting in behind our Victoria University team. This is the first time a New Zealand team has been selected as one of the four international teams invited to compete.
Digitally rendered exterior perspective of the FirstLight house in a mountainous New Zealand setting.
The house utilises simple strategies to minimise energy consumption and maximise solar energy. The building envelope is highly insulated, but most importantly, it is flexible to climatic conditions, with sliding shutters to maximise or reduce solar gain as needed. The interior spaces are also thermally zoned, which further reduces the overall HVAC loads.
I think I could get excited about this! Judging by the comments on their website, a lot of people are excited by the project, with orders already coming in. You can follow their progress on Twitter @FirstLight_NZ or on Facebook.
This looks like more than a bit of #8 wire to me. It looks like the innovation we need to transition to a low-carbon economy.
Published in Environment & Resource Management by frog on Wed, September 1st, 2010
Tags: FirstLight, solar, Solar Decathalon, Victoria University
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
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that is very cool…
..and seems to be an expansion on what some friends of mine in a vegan community do….
they use caravans as private-accomodation…
and they build a deck/steps around them…
and a roof similar to the one shown above…
..they work a treat…
inside/outside-flow…shelter/shade…
sound of rain on corrugated-iron roof….
..while outside….but dry/warm…
..mmm!!!!!!
phil(whoar.co.nz)
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As much as I support the concept I am afraid that it doesn’t do a lot for me, in fact I think it looks ugly.
I also see design faults, living among the southern alps I know very well what a north wester can do and that roof my friends wouldn’t last a day!
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Keep up the good work and I have no doubt that you will succeed in the competition in Washington. Good Luck!
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It seems to me everytime a “self sufficient” house is featured, its setting is on an acres of barren ground with no trees or neighbouring dwellings to block sunlight and on a hill to catch the wind.
So yes the solar powered individual house is possible but not feasable in the suburbs and cities.
Like a kite to propel ships, it is possible but saleable in a commercial setting?
Hope the students address the issue of limited sunlight in the suburbs and cities and come up with a commercial proposition.
It being very easy to design electrical self sufficiency in such perfect environments but will it generate a saleable commercial solar unit for instalation in a urban environment??
The contest should be
1, Take an average 1960 build group house in the suburbs (say Tawa)
2, Design a saleable powered electrical system for the dwelling (a saleable unit MAY be of such size that whole streets or suburbs can be powered by the design – not restricted to one house if economies of scale would make the new unit economically viable)
3, Sell the design concept to the New Zelaand people (government) for funding a start up company
4, Plan and finance manufacturing operations.
5, Sell one unit.
As I said it is very easy to design something, lets see the contest widen to include construction and implementation.
That would be a real challenge.
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Its not about using solar to generate electricity (which is mostly a daft idea in a residential setting), its about building houses to capitalise on the free heat energy where possible.
Its pretty hard with old stock houses to do much, but with new build it is possible – make that easy – to build houses that don’t leak heat, thus reducing their heating needs, and its possible to capture the slar heat straight through the windows.
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Gerrit. Have a look here mate.
http://www.solarlec.com/#/photovoltaic-panels-cells/4539498936
dbuckley. Not actually hard to up the insulation rating of old stock houses. It is being done now, but the scheme needs extending.
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dbuckley and Kerry,
Yep, the technology for solar powered generation is freely available provided your dwelling is in clear space and uncluthered by nearby trees, dwellings, etc.
My problem with the contestants is that with the technology so freely available, what is new that they are doing? Heck even I could do a solar powered house in those circumstances.
And nothing that a thousand others have proved as working quite well.
With 90% of residential housing in the suburbs, surely a better contest would be to research solar power generation in those situations?
Solving that problem would have huge commercial application and planet saving outcomes?
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Hi Gerrit
Have you looked at the solar decathlon website to see what the competition is actually about and to see what the students are involved with?
http://www.solardecathlon.gov/
I think that you will find that the 20 teams involved in the competition are doing exactly what you are saying in your last post. My guess is that the provocative image shown above is more of a marketing tool to showcase New Zealand’s landscape and natural beauty to the US as well as the house itself.
If you have a look at the website for the competition and for the team above you will find that there is actually a whole lot more that has been considered than what is shown here. And you will find that the competition is HUGE and that it is amazing that a NZ team is involved in it!
I suggest you have a look…it is very interesting and most definitely worth following. I have no doubt that it will interest you.
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Also
http://firstlighthouse.ac.nz/
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Drakula,
Had a quick scan of the 72 page contest rules and am much taken with contest 4. Marketability.
Should be interesting. Contest is a bit wide then I envisaged and looks like a good one.
PS
Any know of a better PDF reader then Adobe?
Am heartely sick of Adobe software.
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“using solar to generate electricity (which is mostly a daft idea in a residential setting)”
I’m not sure why you think that a house with a solar array on the roof would not work in a residential suburb.
If you go to almost any suburb in New Zealand, and look down from up on high, all you will see is roofs. Mostly dull, grey, decramastic roofing tiles, all set at the same angle of about 27 degrees, swamping our land from Churton Park to Pakuranga. Roofs, roofs, and more roofs: all wasted at present.
There is a massive market for solar power in New Zealand, and the best place for it is on the roofs of everyday Kiwi suburban homes – no, maybe not the really old, really steep inner-city suburbs maybe, like Mount Victoria, but everywhere else it would work a treat. Our carefully designed and ever so boring suburban sunlight access planes are designed to bring sunlight into our boring suburban homes – and so expose the roof planes all day long to the direct rays of the sun.
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There’s absolutely nothing wrong with PV solar power (other than it doesn’t work at night) until you look at its costs and lifetime costs. In almost all circumstances, it doesn’t make economic sense to use solar power because there are more cost-effective alternatives available, and available at all levels of environmental impact from bad to good.
Why pick a particular option if there are better options available at lower price?
Directly utilising solar energy for heat is a really good idea though.
And the real reason that direct use of heat is a killer application of solar is that for every KW of directly captured and utilised heat from local solar collectors, that’s a KW of heat you don’t need to get from electrical generation (by any means), requiring transmission, distribution, metering etc.
The frustration I have is that solar water heating is seen as a homeowners individual responsibility, rather than as a strategic national goal that benefits the entire country.
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Every house I have designed has been designed with high regard to passive solar heating. Eaves are carefully calculated to allow heat in during winter and keep it out during summer etc.
HIgh thermal mass areas that can reradiate heat from the outside to inside can be useful if used with care.
And the last dozen houses I have designed and built have solar water heating and I retrofitted solar water heating on my current house.
All of this makes sense and I do not see why government subsidies are needed provided the state of the insulation etc is on the LIM report.
I also wrap high thermal mass concrete block areas around my fireplaces and wood burners so that they warm up during winter and reradiate heat at night when the fire dies down.
This is not rocket science.
Solar PV panels are another matter altogether. They are wonderfully useful for electric fences and gate openers etc but for high power use the storage costs and the costs of the panels themselves add up to very expensive power. There is the trade off between storage and back up and many situations need both.
Unfortunately current architectural fashion works against common sense passive solar design.
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Here is the last house I lived on and some views of the park.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2017938&id=1011811548&fbid=1111576462243&ref=mf
People love these houses but they too old fashioned for the architectural journals.
And this is the “”do-up” where we are now. The retrofit solar heater is on the roof.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2017940&id=1011811548&fbid=1111582342390&ref=mf
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It is an interesting contest – the US Department of Energy has been running this competition for the last decade, and things start to get really serious this time, as affordability is introduced as one of the 10 competitions. The end result is to aim these houses (designed, built, and transported to site) at the residential market. This is a pretty big step for the US – but it shows how far along the affordability road things have come. The US is waking up to the fact that their energy sources are limited, and that the sun is their biggest, untapped energy source. This project is a big part of the effort to tap that.
Great to hear of Owen McShane’s work on solar houses too – as far as I understand, in this contest the houses are grid-tied – ie they contribute to the grid during the day when the sun is out, and take back from the grid in the evening. The aim of the competition is to be net grid-neutral overall.
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