The National Renewable Energy Laboratory will be abuzz this weekend, April 12-14, 2019, as hundreds of students descend upon Golden, Colorado for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Solar Decathlon Design Challenge.
38 colleges will be represented from around the world including Saudi Arabia, India, Germany, Panamá, England, and Brazil will join teams from the U.S. in this highly competitive event. Competing teams will have spent 1-2 academic semesters creating solutions for real-world issues in the building industry.
Teams will present their designs to a panel of industry experts in one of six building type categories: Suburban Single-Family, Urban Single-Family, Attached Housing, Mixed-Use Multifamily, Elementary School, or Office Building. Innovation, cost-effectiveness, time to build, quality, resilience, grid-interactivity, efficiency, and local responsiveness are all areas in which each team will be judged. A winner will be chosen in each category, in addition to an overall Design Challenge Grand Winner.
During the event, EEBA will be participating in the Solar Decathlon Career Connections weekend where students will have the chance to engage with potential employers and professionals in various fields surrounding energy efficiency. The U.S. Department of Energy sees the “Collegiate institutions that participate in the challenge...as leaders who are producing career-ready professionals with cutting-edge skills.”
The Design Challenge collegiate institutions are:
- Appalachian State University (Boone, North Carolina)
- Ball State University (Muncie, Indiana)
- California State University, Fullerton (Fullerton, California)
- Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania)
- CEPT University (Ahmedabad, India)
- Dr. Bhanuben Nanavati College of Architecture for Women (Pune, India)
- Eastern Michigan University (Ypsilanti, Michigan)
- Georgia Institute of Technology (Atlanta, Georgia)
- Hampton University (Hampton, Virginia)
- Illinois Institute of Technology (Chicago, Illinois)
- Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis (Indianapolis, Indiana)
- Jefferson University (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania)
- Kansas State University (Manhattan, Kansas)
- King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (Dhahran, Saudi Arabia)
- Miami University (Oxford, Ohio)
- Michigan State University (East Lansing, Michigan)
- State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry (Syracuse, New York)
- Syracuse University (Syracuse, New York)
- Technische Universität Berlin - EUREF Campus (Berlin, Germany)
- Technological University of Panama (El Dorado, Panamá)
- The Manchester School of Architecture (Manchester, England)
- The Pennsylvania State University (Centre County, Pennsylvania)
- The University of Arizona (Tucson, Arizona)
- The University of Texas at Austin (Austin, Texas)
- United States Military Academy at West Point (West Point, New York)
- Universidade Federal do Paraná (Curitiba, Brazil)
- University of Cincinnati (Cincinnati, Ohio)
- University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (Champaign County, Illinois)
- University of Minnesota Twin Cities (Minneapolis, Minnesota)
- University of Missouri-Columbia (Columbia, Missouri)
- University of Portland (Portland, Oregon)
- University of Wisconsin–Madison (Madison, Wisconsin)
- University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (Milwaukee, Wisconsin)
- Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Blacksburg, Virginia)
- Washington University in St. Louis (St. Louis, Missouri)
- West Virginia University (Morgantown, West Virginia)
- Western New England University (Springfield, Massachusetts)
- Yale University (New Haven, Connecticut)