Re_home project...an "eye opening experience" for interdisciplinary student team

Surrounded by some of the nation’s most iconic monuments and buildings, Chris Cirone and the rest of the Solar Decathlon team didn’t exactly take a second to enjoy the scenery.

"We didn't even really know we were in Washington D.C. to be honest with you," said Cirone, a graduate student in agriculture and biological engineering. "We were way too busy."

Parked for two weeks on the National Mall, Illinois was one of 19 universities from around the world to compete in the Department of Energy’s 2011 Solar Decathlon. The two-year process culminated with a seventh-place finish for Illinois.

The competition, which featured 4,000 college students from four different continents, required teams to build solar-powered homes that are affordable, energy efficient, attractive and comfortable to live in.

The project, titled “Re_home,” is specifically designed to be a rapidly deployable home for disaster-relief situations, functioning as a quick response for a family affected by a natural disaster. The solar-powered home provides an immediate and sustainable solution for a family left without a home.

The team behind the project consisted of around 60 students, evenly divided between students with engineering and architecture backgrounds.

After a written proposal was submitted in Fall 2009, the Illinois team was accepted into the competition in Spring 2010. The idea of a rapidly deployable home originated from initial conversations with the Construction Engineering Research Laboratory (CERL). The project’s direction then transitioned from being used for military purposes to being a solution for victims of natural disasters.

“It had to do with funding, but there were a lot of different factors involved,” said Stanton Cady, a masters student in electrical engineering. “A lot changed throughout the process, but the core idea of the home stayed the same.”

Two courses devoted to the project, one for engineering students and one for architecture students, were offered throughout the 2010-2011 academic year.

Working with architecture students with different ideas and expertise provided a unique opportunity and challenge for the engineering students involved.

"We really did try to get the leadership of the architecture team over to our course and the leadership of the engineering course over to the architecture course just to foster some of the collaboration," Cirone said. "We made sure that neither side was working apart from the other."

The final product, which came after a six-month conceptual phase and then a year and a half of detailed design and building, was the result of a collaborative effort from both sides.

"It was very much an integrated process," Cirone said. "They would come to us with ideas to see if they would work, and vice versa. We'd go back and forth, getting goals from each side implemented into the house."

The construction began in nearby Deer Creek, where the shell of the house was built, including the walls, plumbing, electricity, dry walls and the exterior sheeting. At the end of May this year, the home was shipped to campus, where the engineering students installed the solar array, inverters, HVAC system, appliances and the control systems.

Energy efficiency was a major point of emphasis for the project, especially for the engineering students, and the team made it a priority to be “net-zero” with its final product, meaning the home generated all of the energy - if not even more - that it needed to operate.

"We were constantly updating our energy analysis of the house based off of the new ideas that were coming through," Cirone said. "We always wanted to go back and revisit how energy is being consumed and make sure that we have enough power production."

This was no small task, especially with affordability being another key component in the competition. The students involved pointed to the energy efficiency and the cost constraints as being the two biggest challenges within the project.

"The energy balance and the affordability were two key areas that we engineers were focused on," Cirone said. "We wanted to stay within the spirit of the competition and make the net-zero home, but also really wanted to create an affordable house to really sell this idea that net-zero homes are probable."

The effort paid off. Sitting in 14th place before the energy balance was judged, Illinois jumped to seventh overall after being just one of seven projects in the contest to achieve a net-zero balance.

The project was a valuable opportunity for all types of engineers, as nearly every engineering department was represented within the Solar Decathlon team.

"It was a great experience for me because, as a CS major, when else would I have the opportunity to do something like this?" said Dan Mestas, a senior in computer science. "I got to learn a lot about solar-energy and this field, and what it takes to build a house."

Mestas, the only computer science student on the project, spearheaded the control systems behind Re_home, allowing Illinois to have a different dynamic within its project that set it apart from other schools and past Illinois projects.

“Having computer science guys, something we haven't had in the past, we were able to have the awesome control system that we're all really proud of," Cady said. "It’s valuable to have all the different expertise available in the project. It takes a lot to build a house like this."

The house will soon be transported back on campus and its specific functionality is still up in the air, but it will continue to serve as a research model for solar-powered homes.

"It’s eye-opening to put down your books and start applying all your learning,” said Mitchell Walker, a senior in general engineering. “To take all these theories and everything we learn and put it into action has been an awesome experience."
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Writer: Jay Lee, Engineering Communications Office.

If you have any questions about the College of Engineering, or other story ideas, contact Rick Kubetz, editor, Engineering Communications Office, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 217/244-7716.