Cinderella, of the Solar Generation

Thus pronounced US Secretary of Energy Samual Bodman, "Santa Clara University, the Cinderella story of this week has rallied to claim third place in the 2007 Solar Decathlon competition." The week long competition among twenty international university teams to build the most efficient, most livable and most economical solar home concluded today.

Its easy to look at the young faces of the team and ascribe their good fortune to beginners luck. Its true that Californians have always had a knack for making the best use of sunshine, but their substantial victory is well earned a foreshadow of things to come.

At the beginning of the competition, visitors were asking, "Who is Santa Clara University?" Word eventually spread, "Oh... that's Silicon Valley!"

Their odyssey to the award stand was certainly dramatic. From humble beginnings just a year ago, Santa Clara was twenty first in line for the twenty team slots. Only when another school withdrew was Santa Clara admitted.

Santa Clara University as the smallest school in the competition, fielded the smallest team. Due to multiple transportation snags, their house arrived nearly a week late. With no architecture school to draw from, Santa Clara faced a major challenge in the architecture intensive scoring. It happened that architecture was the first scored event, which landed them in eighteenth place after the first day.

But from that point on, the Santa Clara team shined. Their design included meticulous selection of advanced and renewable materials. Wall tiles made from recycled bottles and extensive use of bamboo for uses ranging from load bearing beams, cabinetry and even bedclothes. The bamboo beams showcased in the house were designed by Santa Clara University and are the first code-compliant load bearing bamboo beams in North America.

The energy balance and environmental control systems developed by the team include a solar hot water powered air conditioner and a solar panel to inverter scheme that was so clever that it was later adopted by world leading solar panel producer Sun Power as their default installation configuration. Combined with their detailed planning and game strategies, Santa Clara chalked up victory after victory, climbing from eighteenth to fourteenth, then ninth and sixth and finally to an amazing third place beside thrice-veteran University of Maryland and solar powerhouse Germany.

The spirit of entrepreneurship boils in these students. These are not the fringe "flower children" who advocated green in the past. These are the finest of engineers directing themselves to a future they see as natural and profitable. While an older generation is pining that there is no top down "Space Race" leadership to inspire innovation anymore, this generation is creating it own imperative from grass roots.

The Solar Decathlon competition has given them a spotlight to stand in for a time, but that is more for our benefit than theirs. The Santa Clara University team may be the most visible example, but the Solar Generation is forming around the World. The Solar Century they intend to build will change our world for the better, sooner than anyone from the older generations is expecting.

Solar Decathlon Winner Today

Its been quite a race this week!

Today at 2pm EDT, the winner of the 2007 Solar Decathlon will be announced.

Five of the top seven teams are within 25 points of each other (out of 1,000) The final competition "Engineering" worth 150 points remains.

The University of Maryland has dominated the scoring since the first day but Santa Clara Universtity with a slow start at 18th place has climbed eleven places to within 13 points of the top five. The final competition puts everone within reach of first place.

NOTE: Santa Clara's strategy will work best if the last day of the competition is cloudy. So check live webcam of the Solar Decathlon villiage above for cloudiness.

The last day of scoring can be viewed here.

Good luck to each of the twenty groundbreaking teams!

Cast a Giant Circle

Drawing a circle around a company's environmental footprint is tricky. Does it end at the front desk? or should the circle include the downstream consequences and benefits as well?

Many companies produce intelligent products and services that enable millions to reduce their energy consumption. In the process, their employees may drive cars to work and their data centers may glow like the Sun.

But if the products they produce reduce their customer's own driving (Ebay) or the new version of their product consumes far less power than last year's model (Intel), the result can be factories that save more energy than they consume in the full global context.

Once the purview of avid environmentalists, the cause for conservation is being taken over by the market. Conservation and Clean Tech is good business. People are now saving energy because it saves money.

There was a time when conservation was a major concession to operational effectiveness and only a niche product feature. But today, Clean Tech solutions hit every component of the bottom line.

Clean Tech materials are lightweight, durable and because of their design for sustainability are less susceptible to supply interruptions. A lower power product upgrade can actually pay for itself in energy savings. A company may not even stake claim to "Cleanness" in its promotion. Clean Tech based products are simply better products.

An update of the old saw might be well heeded by those who would protest the drivers of the new Clean Economy:

You have to spend energy in order to save energy.

Solar Decathlon Underway

Today, October 14, 2007, is the third day of the Solar Decathlon competition in Washington DC. (Live scores for each team can be seen here.) Twenty university teams from around the world are exercising their undergraduate designed, ultra energy efficient homes for the judges in hopes to take home first prize. At the same time, the teams together are achieving collective success in attracting much deserved attention to the state of the art for residential Clean Tech.

The technical achievements of these teams are staggering. But it must be remembered that these are young undergraduate engineers grappling with their first exposure to real world problems.

The Santa Clara University Team is no exception.

For the past year, the project has grown in complexity. The team's ranks have bloomed to include more than a hundred students and corporate sponsors ranging from Silicon Valley start-ups to the Fortune 500. By September, the home was built and the competition strategy was planned. All that remained was it disassemble the house, ship it to Washington DC and reassemble it.

The Santa Clara Team is an underdog. It was the 21st ranked applicant to 20 slots. Only when one team dropped out did Santa Clara become an entrant. It is the smallest University accepted to the competition and the only University without an architecture school to be accepted. It also has the farthest shipping distance to Washington DC. (The international teams assembled their houses in nearby Maryland.)

The shipping distance, it turned out, was a big deal. Undergraduate projects typically involve displaying your project beside the podium as you give your final presentation. They do not typically involve the transcontinental wide-load version of Murphy's Law.

The truck transporting the house had breakdowns en route: twice. The first before it was out of sight of Santa Clara University. This breakdown required the students to drive to Sacramento for parts followed by pre-dawn welding before the house was at last on its way.

Then, the day before it was due to arrive, news came that the truck had broken down again -in Nebraska. The students had to phone truck repair shops to arrange after-hours service.

When the US Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman visited the team, the house was still hours away. At last, on October 5th, with only a week until the competition began, the house arrived to the cheers of every Solar Decathlon team.

Wisely, the students had used their extra wait time to lay out in minute detail their construction plan. It is telling that although the Santa Clara house was the last one to arrive, it was one of the first to successfully pass inspection.

Now the competition is underway. The Solar Decathlon website is reporting team standing and scores updated every fifteen minutes. The winner and final scores will be announced on Friday, October 20th.

We're rooting to Santa Clara to perform well in its representation of the West Coast of the United States, but all of the teams are making history this week. Give them your support.

Don't let anyone you know who can visit the competition miss out on this unique opportunity to see the future. The 2007 Solar Decathlon teams are the first graduating class of the Solar Century.