"DOE Solar Decathlon" project - 650 Sq Ft Solar house cost $500,000? Why do it?

Gaby,

The link to the article would be nice.

Linking the Solyndra scandal to Energy Efficient Housing and solar design is unfair.

Solyndra tried to reinvent the wheel and failed. Why a half billion dollars in a very short period was lent to a failing business venture is beyond all common sense. A colossal waste of money that is hard to fathom. I would agree it was a losing technology

500 K for our college kids to design a project spread over 5 universities seems like a bargain

Houses today are built much like the ones in Levitown in 1940. There is huge room for improvement and intergrating both old and new technoligies to reduce load.

Renewable energy is here to stay. A wheel is old technology and old engineering as well as are many things that work well. Just because it is not brand new does not make it invalid.

Most current PV systems are placed on middle class homes not millionaire homes. Here in California we have thousands and thousand of them on middle class homes.

Solar thermal has a very quick payback on dollars and is one of the most under developed renewable resources. Most systems will see a seven year or less payback and operate for many years to come providing free energy. I would call that cost effective.

While I agree 100 percent that before we write huge checks with no accountability to private companies we should think twice.

To spend money on research of a practical project to train our future engineers and designer builders is not a waste in my view.

Energy Efficient housing with renewable design features is reasonable and cost effective I would argue

If this experiment will hep to improve way thing are don at the moment then yes. Sometimes project like this might bring something new to the industry. Perhaps it will help to save more money in the future.

This is old science but its a new implementation of technology to every day use by householders (You and me). This technology believe or not will get better. There is much more to discover.

by: TudorSolar

http://www.tudorsolar.com/

Affordability is one of the parameters that the contest is evaluated upon. Do you have a link for the $500k prices? If that's a cost for a mass-produced product, it clearly won't be viable today. But if that's a cost for producing quantity one, then that's very cheap for a research project of that scale.

Education is a high priority for me. If $100k helps an engineering department learn how to do a real-world project, and trains up a team of designers that year, I consider it a bargain. Shortage of energy is becoming a key issue in this world, and we need to get students thinking in this direction.

Costs and performance in UK Typically, Active Solar Heating systems installed into existing households are priced in the range of £2,500 to £4,000 (depending on the size of house, type of collector, etc.). For DIY or new build system installations, costs can be reduced - particularly in the case of large scale new building projects.

It's all an experiment and that is what costs. A solar and wind powered home that can take you off the grid and is that size should run under $150,000 or less and if you do much of it yourself half that.