SIEMENS

It looks like something from another world that has landed in the midst of Budapest University’s historic brick buildings. It has only one floor, it’s black, and it’s shaped like a trapezoid. Its longest side, which faces south, has ceiling-to-floor sliding glass doors that open into airy rooms flooded with light. The house’s unconventional features also include a large terrace and a long free-standing wall that’s black as well. The house is not only eye-catching but also an energy marvel. Solar power alone provides the building with almost twice as much usable energy as it consumes.

Around 70 students worked together on the building. The house won awards in several of the ten categories of the international Solar Decathlon competition held in Madrid in September 2012.

“We worked intensively on this project for two years,” says Adrian Auth, an architecture student who collaborated on the project with students from fields such as civil engineering, electrical engineering, and interior design, as well as management and marketing experts. They named their project ODOO, which is the Hungarian word for “shelter” or “den.” Siemens was the main sponsor, providing roughly €200,000 in funding, or 30 percent of the total budget.

Siemens has maintained close contact with BME for many years. Dr. Lásló Ludvig, Head of the Infrastructure and Cities Sector at Siemens Hungary, learned about the project more or less by accident during one of the annual meetings between the two partners. “We immediately saw that the students were using the project to pursue many goals that are important to us – especially those associated with energy efficiency,” says Ludvig.

Calling Home. That’s why the equipment of the Solar Decathlon house includes Siemens systems that control all of the structure’s technology – from lighting and blinds to the heating and air conditioning units – in a manner that ensures the lowest possible energy consumption. The systems can also be accessed via a smartphone at any time. “We not only supplied the technology and served as an active sponsor; we also provided the students with advice and recommendations,” Ludvig explains. Osram AG also helped by contributing its expertise and supplying energy-efficient LED lamps.

“The combination of the black paint and the ceiling-to-floor windows on the southern facade ensures a very high level of passive sunlight absorption and heat retention,” says Auth. Traditional solar cells on the roof and thin-layered modules on the southern side of the wall on the outside convert sunlight into electricity. “If it’s placed in Spain or Hungary, the house can provide between 10,500 and 13,500 kilowatt-hours of solar energy per year,” says Auth. “However, it consumes just under 6,000 kilowatt-hours.”

The only time residents occasionally need power from the grid is in the winter. Conversely, the house provides its surplus power to the grid during seasons with good weather. In order to ensure the house doesn’t get too hot in the summer, the students combined the solar modules on the roof with a solar cooling system. This also benefits the photovoltaic system, which runs less efficiently at high temperatures. The equipment supplied by Siemens for the photovoltaic unit includes circuit breakers and monitoring systems that track solar energy yield and electricity consumption in real time.

An energy management system ensures efficient coordination of electricity production and consumption by, for instance, having the washing machine run when the sun significantly steps up photovoltaic electricity generation. The building’s networked household appliances are from BSH.

Winning Shelter. The students’ work certainly paid off, as the ODOO team captured awards in three Solar Decathlon categories. It won a silver medal in the Engineering and Design category, as well as in the Comfort category. The jury stated that the house created a comfortable ambience in terms of temperature, air quality, acoustics, and lighting. The team, which also finished third in the Energy Balance category, was ranked sixth overall among the 18 international teams in the competition. The BME students also took home three honorary awards for sustainability, lighting, and interior design.

The competition was launched 11 years ago by the U.S. Department of Energy in order to demonstrate what can be accomplished with renewable energy. It’s also meant to show the type of comfort that houses utilizing state-of-the-art green technologies can offer. The competition is open to student teams from all universities and technical colleges around the world. Team performance is assessed in ten disciplines ranging from Architecture and Energy Balance to Communications. A bilateral agreement between the U.S. and Spain brought the competition to Europe two years ago, and since then the event has alternated between the U.S. and Madrid every year.

Last year’s competition was not the first time Siemens has served as a sponsor for a Solar Decathlon house. Virginia Tech University’s Lumenhaus also benefits from the company’s technology and expertise. The house won the 2010 Solar Decathlon competition, and has since been frequently reassembled for demonstrations at prominent locations such as Times Square in New York, as well as sites in Washington and Chicago.

The ODOO house also has what it takes to attract a lot of visitors. In fact, it has continued to thrill many people even after the exhibition in Madrid. BME now plans to use it for courses, demonstrations, and other purposes, and Siemens will invite interior designers, construction companies, electrical installation specialists, and others to the award-winning house for monthly workshops in the future.