Review of Results

I was hoping the student team would be writing the blog regularly, but the competition turned out to be grueling with them at the house from 7:00 am to 11:00 pm. Having just returned from Washington DC, I thought I would reflect on the competition, our scoring and the overall project.

The last entry that anyone saw was the one from Karen below. I thought about asking her to edit it or to rewrite it once the emotion of the scoring dissipated but blogs are suppose to be reflections of moments and therefore, it should stand as that moment early in this week. Many things went wrong for the LTU team, but much went right. It was a wonderful (or it will be in a few weeks/months/years) experience for the students and I saw them grow enormously over the last two years. Considering many of the other teams were made up of graduate students and the average age of the winning Darmstadt team was reported to be 28 or 29, our undergraduates held their own. Most of them started this project while in their second or third year of undergrad BEFORE having many of the classes they needed to do the work. It was a crash course for them.

Here is our final standing out of 20 teams(read below for notes and explanations):
Architecture 17
Engineering 19
Market Viability 11
Communications 9
Comfort Zone 17
Appliances 11
Hot Water 20 (zero points)
Lighting 12
Energy Balance 16 (zero points)
Getting Around 10

I am happy with the scoring when you take out a couple of factors. So what is up with those zeros?? Well, the team never got the hot water system running. Steve Tominac, our mechanical engineering student, was completing the system when he found out his grandfather was very sick and was dying. We made an immediate decision that if he needed to go home to be with his family this was more important than the competition. He left before he could finish the hot water system. We didn't have anyone else who knew the system as we have been light on engineers on the team and therefore the system was never completed. This combined with the zero in energy balance guaranteed a low if not bottom finish. I am still happy that we chose a more important situation concerning family over a competition and do not regret sending Steve home.

We held our own in Communications (thanks Karen) and Market Viability (go Steve N), Appliances and Getting Around. Appliances and Getting Around would have been even higher except for a strategy that was attempted on Thursday last week. It was clear after two days of cloudy weather that the team was not going to have enough energy in the batteries to pass the Energy Balance test. The engineers on the team decided to shut the entire house down Thursday and not charge the car in an attempt to make the Energy Balance cut off. This would turn off the appliances and mean the car couldn't be driven the next day. The reasoning was that the first two competitions would be worth an extra 30 points for Friday but Energy Balance would be 100 points, so to lose the 30 would give a net gain of 70 points. It was sound thinking IF it worked. The team ended up not making the cut off for energy and lost both the 30 and 100 points for all three competitions on Friday. It could have been a smart gamble . . . but with all gambles, luck was involved. This was the final piece that ended the Solar Decathlon for Lawrence Tech.

Architecture came in low because the jury seemed to be looking for novelty and tie-in with technical systems. The team was very aware of their target audience of middle class and consciously chose not to make a modern glass box. In this case, it just went against them - this is just one of the subjective things you can't guess ahead. A different jury, a different outcome. Almost everyone who came through the house commented on how beautiful it was. And it was the only house who's space planning was so sophisticated that it had two bedrooms but the house felt large. No points were awarded for this, however. I understand why the team felt cheated by the subjective competitions but these are hard to second guess.

We didn't score very high in engineering again because the team chose to take the competition at its intentions and integrate everyday, off the shelf items that the middle class home owner would be likely to embrace. The lack of product innovation hurt the team here.

After it is all said and done, I am proud of the students who worked on the project and what they achieved as well as the commitment and trust of our sponsors who made this project possible. We at the university hope to turn the experience into something even more significant for Michigan and of course, Troy is excited to get their new solar powered public educational home next week.

Philip Plowright, Faculty Advisor, LTU Solar Decathlon 2007