March 2012

On March 30th, we attended the “2nd Symposium on Energy-Plus-Buildings” in Stuttgart. This event was hold in line with the congress “CEP® Clean Energy & Passivehouse“ and moderated by Prof. Dr.-Ing. Thomas Stark. We had the possibility to present our project along with the other German team from Konstanz „Ecolar“. In the session „Technology and Perspectives“ Julia from our Team and Linda from Konstanz’ Team introduced the Solar Decathlon and explained the main technical concepts of the two houses. The over 150 attendees showed particular interest in reused materials like the CD façade or the floor out of wood from Tivoli stadium.

Lots of other presentations we attended referred to previous editions of Solar Decathlons Europe. “Only a few other projects are documented as well as the Solar Decathlon houses”, one participant states, “and therefore the German contributions to the competition are well known.” It only proofs that SDE really makes a difference and motivates us to work even harder and have an impact on future developments as well!

We could also take a look and get some inspiration from the “Effizienzhaus Plus” by Werner Sobek. Differently to the SDE, which focuses on solar energy, all elements of energy management are taken into account: energy storage, e-mobility with cars and bikes and smart grid functionality just to name a few.
All in all we had a great day in Stuttgart exchanging with our fellow competitors and presenting our project. We look forward to visit Stuttgart again in two weeks for the “Holz/Haus/Energie” fair.