2020 Solar Decathlon Challenge

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SOLAR DECATHLON - DESIGN CHALLENGE

PPI's Building & Construction Division has renewed our commitment to the Solar Decathlon - Design Challenge event for 2020. This is PPI’s sixth year supporting this DOE program.

The 2020 Solar Decathlon Design Challenge took place at DOE's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, Colorado on April 17-19, 2020.

As we've done since 2015, PPI will be an Education Sponsor and BCD's Director of Engineering Lance MacNevin will return as a juror.

PPI encourages design teams to incorporate innovative plumbing and mechanical systems to improve the health, safety and welfare of your building occupants and the efficiency of your buildings. This includes systems such as:

  • Fire protection
  • Hot- and cold-water plumbing
  • Hydronic radiant heating & cooling
  • Ground source geothermal piping systems

To provide inspiration and guidance, we are pleased to share the following information about the systems which are based on technologies supported by our organization and our members. Please review the following:

Results

The 2020 event accepted entries from 45 teams representing 31 collegiate institutions from the United States, Canada, Australia, Egypt, Ecuador, and other countries. Entries were in six categories of building types (e.g. Urban Single Family, Multi-Family, and Elementary School). Teams of Jurors, assigned to each category, utilized an objective scoring scheme to evaluate each of the design entries across ten contests (i.e. “Decathlon”).

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 event was held virtually, with students submitting video presentations, in addition to the typical submission documents, to the jurors in advance of the Competition Weekend. On April 18th, DOE arranged for each student team to give a summary presentation to the jurors, followed by Q&A and discussion. Then, the jurors shared comments, compared scores, and reached consensus to select their category’s winner.

On April 19th the six Division Winners were announced. Following a few minutes of joy, each winning team then gave a summary presentation of their design, and the Grand Jurors selected the overall Grand Winners .

See the full 2020 results.

Congratulations to the Winners:

Urban Single-Family Division: The University of British Columbia (Vancouver, BC)

Suburban Single-Family Division: Monash University (Melbourne, Australia)

Attached Housing Division: Miami University (Oxford, Ohio)

Mixed-Use Multifamily Division: The University of Arizona (Tucson, Arizona)

Elementary School Division: University of Oregon (Eugene, Oregon)

Office Building Division: Illinois Institute of Technology (Chicago, Illinois)

  • Ground source heat pump with radiant ceiling cooling in a Chicago high-rise
  • Presentation Slides

Note: Photo credits to "DOE Solar Decathlon"