Blog – Solar Decathlon 2009 Team Germany – Technische Universität Darmstadt

After the Opening ceremony Mr. Chu, Secretary of Energy in the U.S. visited the german surPLUShome. Here he is standing at the stairs with Sardika having a closer viev to our ceiling with its latent storage out of salt-hydrate …

The Opening Ceremony compensated for all that effort of all teams to get their buidlings running at the National Mall.

The teams had to wait for over one hour in the sun so they were able to get a little hint for the power of the following Solar Decathlon Competition. Team Germany shared sunscreen wherever available but still some of our team ended like little red crabs (like me) …

A few hours ago we got our pulic internet adress here on the mall. After some coding of webpages we got the livestream broadcasted to our website sd-live.de!


Goto livecam page

In Team Germanys house nearly everything is reconfigurable. One detail we never have seen before was the exterior flaps of the cooling ceiling. They look great … as the building envelope becomes more and more homogenous and functional at the same time.

Beginning with net-grid connection, the houses have to run in balance. But there was enough energy to check all systems in use. The heat pump is running, the lights turn on as supposed, the exterior lighting show a glowing light in the night. But there are still some aspects missing in the overall concept. One of these last technical works are the exterior flaps of our cooling ceiling.

Cleaning is night work. Otherwise we would shade our modules to much.

But as you can see, maybe we are able to generate power as well in the night in Washington, DC … There is a reason why the aspect light pollution is included in the LEED certification for sustainable homes in the US.

We are on grid! Beneath the net-grid we were able to get the approval for all other electrical installation; this as first team. Everybody spent applause to the responsible electrical engineers during handing over.

And after a short period of time, the surPLUShome was already in a positive balance, even though many electrical users were running to buildup  the house.

Many members began the day with cleaning. The National Mall is very dusty and as there are still building works; this will not change until the beginning of the competition. The glazing and the facade serve big areas for maintenance and as they are not cleanable from the ground, there was movable scaffolding slowly stepping around the surPLUShome.

There is lots of media around in the Solar Village. Photographers and television stepping into the building site to get any information they get. And the public asks enduringly questions about the facade. At least one person at any time has to explain the building design and engineering. Even though this lowers the work performance of Team Germany we are proud to see the impact of the surPLUShome already …

About the photovoltaics:
Lutz and Henning are mounting the last 2 PV modules at the roof with the Solar Decathlon television recording. The facade is finished up to the elements in front of the installation boxes as they still need an official inspection. With this inspection, we will try to go on grid today. The European power net for Team Spain and Team Germany is installed and just waiting for us …

Today the installation crew of the DOE worked at our interconnection including the terminal box. After that the exterior wiring should be completed.