Matt Nagel
Institute Communications and Public Affairs
Georgia Tech’s
Solar Decathlon team marked the beginning of its
building phase with a groundbreaking of sorts. The team
gathered at the Decathlon’s construction site
with sponsors and supporters to kick off the construction
phase of the competition.
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Associate
Professor Chris Jarrett, one of Tech's faculty advisors
for the Solar Decathlon, and Southern Company representative
Marc Rice at the Feb. 9 groundbreaking. Southern
Company is one of the project’s top sponsors.
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“It is kind of exciting and terrifying at the
same time because we put a lot of thought into the design,
but there are always things you don’t think about
— especially from a construction perspective,”
said Jodi Bell-Quinn, a master’s student in the
Architecture Program.
The Solar Decathlon is an international collegiate
competition sponsored
by the U.S. Department of Energy that brings student
teams from universities across the United States, Europe
and Canada to compete in designing, building and operating
highly energy-efficient, completely solar-powered houses.
The construction site is at 575 14th Street, on the
corner of Hemphill Avenue. The house will be built outside
behind the Institute
of Paper Science and Technology (IPST) building.
The competition consists of 10 different categories,
seven of which focus on energy efficiency; others include
design and comfort. The team with the most points —
the most energy-efficient and innovatively designed
house — wins.
The Tech team won’t actually start building for
a couple of weeks because it is waiting on materials
and supplies, but the evolution of the house is well
underway. Students from the Colleges of Sciences, Engineering
and Architecture have been collaborating on developing
the design of the house and learning from each other.
“Working with other majors has been very educational,”
said Nadine Kashlan, a fourth-year Architecture student.
“Our thought processes are different from one
major to the next. This project allows you to see how
engineers and architecture students go about finding
a solution differently. We all come at it from different
angles, but in the end we are striving for the same
conclusion.”
“Working with engineers brings a new aspect to
the design because they think about things we haven’t
considered before,” said Bell-Quinn. “It
makes the project more real, and I think the more realistic
you have things coming together just makes the project
richer in the end.”
Each of the 20 teams in this year’s competition
will assemble their homes for judging on the Mall in
Washington, DC, later this year.
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