Cornell’s ‘Silo House’ came in seventh out of the 20 teams competing in the 2009 Solar Decathlon, a U.S Energy Department sponsored competition in Washington D.C. that challenges university students to construct solar powered houses.

Following its championship in the last Solar Decathlon in 2007, Team Germany prevailed again in this year’s competition. Illinois came in second, followed by Team California.

“I’m really proud of what our team has done,” said Myra Wong ’10, a member of Cornell’s team. “We tried really hard and were a tough contender and, despite some rankings that we might not agree with, I’m still very happy with our overall seventh place finish.”

The Silo House, differentiated from the other contestants by its three-part cylindrical shape as opposed to a box form, was not well received by the Decathlon’s architecture judges. Out of the 10 contests, the Cornell team’s architecture score was the most crippling and ranked it 16th out of the 20 universities.

“I think that was our biggest disappointment along the way. We took a gamble and designed something unique on purpose,” said Natalie Pierro ’09, an architecture student. “We were banking on it, and in the end it was the opposite. It was a complete shock.”

The Cornell team’s originality also comes with another price: the design was unable to accommodate as large a solar panel as that of

the other teams. This turned out to be a high cost given the past week’s rainy weather. With hardly any sun, the Cornell team had to sacrifice points in other areas to maintain net zero energy expenditure for the net metering contest, in which the house electrical meter must read zero or less to receive the maximum 100 points, with up to 50 extra points awarded for producing surplus energy.

In keeping with its success in the 2007 Solar Decathlon, Team Germany took first place with a total of 908.297 points (out of 1000). Illinois came second, with a little over a 10 point differential, followed by Team California.

Germany’s house, completely covered in solar panels, utilized the box model. Wong said this helped the team to get ahead of the competition.

“[The Germans] knew that the 150 points are dependent on your array and how much you can produce, so they did the smart thing and made [the house] as big as allowable,” Wong said. “They did well on architecture, but I don’t think the house was that interesting.”

Wong admitted that much of the competition was about looking at the rules carefully and strategizing ways to maximize the number of points in the objective contests, but said that the Cornell team attempted to think out of the box.

“Despite knowing all the rules of the competition, the Cornell team still wanted to make a house that was architecturally different, and in that we sacrificed making the optimum house for the competition,” Wong said. “A house that isn’t architecturally interesting can still win the contest … but that wasn’t our mission.”

Pierro also had a positive outlook. She pointed out that despite its poor ranking in architecture, Cornell still maintained seventh place.

“It just goes to show that we had our act together in a lot of different areas,” Pierro said.

The Silo House came in second place in the communications contest, which involves public outreach such as media, tours for the public, brochures and the team’s website. Cornell also came sixth for the hot water and home entertainment competitions.

Despite good experiences at the Solar Decathlon, the Cornell team may not return to compete in 2011.

“There are a lot of specific regulations that keep us from doing what we want to do … I think there are other opportunities that people are looking into,” said Pierro, who also commented on problems with funding.

While Cornell’s future participation in the Solar Decathlon is unclear, the team left D.C. with no regrets. Wong, who has made three Ithaca-D.C trips in the past 20 days, said it was exciting to set up the house, give tours and run contests on the National Mall. Pierro also spoke positively of the overall experience: “It was a risk and we wouldn’t have done it any differently looking back on it,” she said. “Everyone seemed to enjoy it.”