Seven Sexy Solar Homes: a Slideshow

#4 – Das “Cube House”

Image credit: Jim Tetro, DOE Solar Decathlon

Here we have Team Germany’s entrant into the 2009 Solar Decathlon, a biennial competition put on by the Department of Energy challenging university students to design and build an affordable, 100-percent solar-powered home. Team Germany’s Cube House won the pivotal Net Metering award at the Decathlon by creating more solar energy than the house consumed—despite three days of rain during the week-long competition. It did so using innovative thin-film CIGS solar panels for siding, as well as a rooftop solar array. All told, the 11.1-kW solar energy system provided more than twice the amount of energy that the simply-designed, ultra-sexy Cube House needed.