Monday, August 18, 2014

Taiwan Design Recognized in Solar Decathlon Europe

A team from National Chiao Tung University on Friday beat 19 other contestants from around the world with their design for an energy-saving building in the Solar Decathlon Europe 2014.

The team's Orchid House won a perfect 120 points in the decathlon's Urban Design, Transportation & Affordability contest, one of the competition's 10 categories.

The team is the first that Taiwan has sent to competition, the European version of the original Solar Decathlon initiated in 2002 by the US Department of Energy to encourage designs blending affordability, consumer appeal with optimal energy production.

The European competition has been held every two years since 2010. It brought together 20 university teams this year to design, build and operate a full-scale, entirely functional solar-powered house.

This year's decathlon is being held in Versailles from June 27 through July 12.

Universities from 15 other countries took part in the event, including France, Italy, Denmark, Switzerland, Romania, Germany, Japan, Thailand and the United States.

The overall winner of the decathlon is the team able to score the most points in the 10 contests.

In addition to design, individual awards are presented in nine other competitions: architecture, house functions, engineering & construction, electrical energy balance, comfort conditions, sustainability, innovation, energy efficiency, communication & social awareness.

The Chiao Tung University team, consisting of 30 students and 10 teachers, got some support from Delta Electronics' high-end technologies.

The major Taiwanese hi-tech firm provided the team with its building energy management system and newly unveiled Battery Energy Storage Solution, which allows electricity stored in the batteries in the system to be either used by the household when there is no sunlight or fed into a power grid when there is surplus energy.

Source: http://www.wantchinatimes.com/news-subclass-cnt.aspx?id=20140705000092&cid=1105

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