2014 Solar Decathlon Europe's

Created in 2002 by the U.S. Department of Energy, the Solar Decathlon is an international competition open to universities and institutions of higher education worldwide, giving them an opportunity to compete in meeting a challenge: “Design and build a solar house that is energy independent”.

Presentation

Since its creation, Solar Decathlon has been open only to universities and institutions of higher education worldwide. This international dimension makes it possible to compare, assess and analyze how each participating team imagines, designs, adapts and builds an energy-independent housing unit for the solar energy available in their countries.

The houses proposed are not just concepts. They must be marketable in whole or in part and they must fit into the environment of their country of origin. The procedures invented and applied to the solar house must be transposable to industrial production.

Get involved

After an open call for candidacies which includes the general rules of the competition, 20 teams are selected. The selection is made based on the project presented and only those teams presenting a house that meets the requirements laid down in the rules, which are the specifications for the competition, are accepted.

Once the teams have been selected, they have approximately 18 months to work on the engineering and architecture, and to develop the processes and materials to equip the solar house.

This work is based on the general rules of the competition, prepared and drawn up by a technical and scientific committee (engineers, architects, urban planners, researchers, etc.), which the schools will use to design and produce their houses in compliance with the technical specifications.

Objectives

• improve the transmission of knowledge, research work and experimentation in the field of renewable energy, and notably solar energy;
• train students to the optimization of energy resources;
• increase public awareness of the houses of tomorrow and to present the materials, products and technologies that will be used in building them.

Opportunities

Discover a showcase of university and industrial technological know-how and innovation from the point of view of the city of tomorrow.

Position the housing environment as the cornerstone of a new system of global performance taking into account the energy, the environment, the mobility, the health, the comfort, the transport, the digital technologies and the employment(use).

Participate in an international crossroads of exchanges gathering stakeholdrs of the building, the industry and the energy with the aim of a full and whole integration of innovative systems in the new long-lasting models of construction and housing environment to reach energy efficiency,

Solar Decathlon Europe is a unique opportunity to make sensitive and inform about the individual ecological housing environment

Useful links

www.solardecathlon2014.fr