Georgia Tech Team Wins Prize in the U.S. Department of Energy’s New Solar Decathlon

A team from Georgia Tech’s School of Architecture, School of Building Construction, and School of Civil and Environmental Engineering won first place in the category for net-zero energy, urban single-family home at the 2019 Solar Decathlon Design Challenge Weekend, April 12-14 2019, held at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado.

The U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon is a collegiate competition that tasks student teams with designing and building highly efficient and innovative buildings powered by renewable energy. This year, the Department of Energy combined two student building design competitions to create the new Solar Decathlon competition.

The Solar Decathlon Design Challenge Weekend took place April 12-14, 2019. Throughout the weekend, student design teams presented their work to a jury of industry experts, attended presentations by collegiate peers and leaders in the energy profession, and engaged with a variety of energy-focused organizations.

The Georgia Tech team was led by Tyler Pilet, Ph.D. in Architecture student with a focus area in high performance building (HPB).

“Our team designed a community-driven, low cost, net-zero home in Grove Park,” said Pilet. “We partnered with the Grove Park Foundation and Atlanta Habitat for Humanity to make the design’s construction a reality in the future. The competition was a great experience that taught us how to design every part and system of a building, from conceptual massing to HVAC and community solar power design.”

In addition to Pilet, the interdisciplinary team consisted of Warren Alexius Campbell (Master of Science (M.S.) in Architecture, HPB), Wen Yi (Vincent) Chang (M.S. in Architecture, HPB), Yuran Kong (M.S. in Architecture, HPB), Yuhang Li (Master of Architecture), Dan Lu (M.S. in Architecture, HPB), Jingxin Xu (Master of Science in Urban Design), Raj Sanjaybhai Shah (M.S. in Building Construction), Raunak Tibrewala (M.S. in Architecture, HPB), Xinyi Zhang (M.S. in Civil Engineering).

Jason Brown, full-time lecturer for high performance buildings in the School of Architecture, served as the team’s advisor. Fried Augenbroe, professor and director of the High Performance Building Lab, and Tarek Rakha, assistant professor for high performance buildings, also helped by reviewing the students’ work. Acme Panel and YKKserved as industry partners. Additional outside partners that contributed to the final project included Grove Park Foundation, Grove Park Neighborhood Association, Atlanta Habitat for Humanity, Perkins+Will, Southface, Pursuit Engineering, the Atlanta Regional Commission and the Mayor’s Office of Resilience.