Solar Decathletes Headed to Washington, D.C.

Applied Materials has sponsored the 2009 U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon, but is also lending its technical and monetary support to two California schools that teamed together for this year’s contest, Santa Clara University and the California College of the Arts. Their entry, Refract House, is a “zero-energy” house that will compete in a number of challenges on the National Mall in October.

The house was unveiled at a ceremony at Santa Clara University on September 1st giving media and the public an opportunity to see the many unique features of the home including its solar thermal and photovoltaic technology.

The design is fantastic, with it’s large outside deck I’d love to have it on a piece of waterfront or mountain property in California, in fact several visitors commented that they should auction it off when they were done.

The house will now be disassembled, trucked across the country and reassembled in Washington, D.C. with 19 other schools.

These houses aren’t science experiments, they are working demonstrations of all that is possible with clean-tech today and our leaders in Washington should take some time to tour them to see both the excitement and promise of the students who have done such innovative work as well as the promise of the technologies they have incorporated into these houses. These students are all clean-tech ambassadors and we wish them well as they start their journey to Washington.