Annex 74 Publications

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  Factsheet: Competition & Living Lab Platform (PDF 0.31MB) 
  November 2019
  The Annex background is the success story of the Solar Decathlon. The Solar Decathlon is an international student competition based on an initiative of the U.S. Department of Energy started in 2000. In this competition, universities from all over the world are challenged to design, build and operate solar powered houses. It is the only student competition worldwide addressing the realization and performance assessment of buildings and not the design only. During the competition’s final phase, each interdisciplinary team assembles its house in a common Solar Village. The final phase includes a public exhibition, monitoring and 10 contests, the reason why the competition was named a "Decathlon". Thirteen competitions have been conducted up to the end of 2017 with eight took place in the US, three in Europe, one in China and one in Columbia. With the United Emirates and Morocco, two countries in hot climates will held competitions in near future.
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  Solar Decathlon Europe – A review on the energy engineering of experimental solar powered houses 
  November 2021
  Author(s): Karsten Voss, Susanne Hendel, Moritz Stark
  Publisher: Elsevier
  The Solar Decathlon is a competition for universities from all over the world to design, build and operate small experimental solar powered houses. Its first edition took place in the US in 2002. Since 2010 it is in practice in Europe with four competitions and 65 net zero or net energy plus houses build and tested in 10 disciplines (decathlon). This paper provides an overview and analysis on the European edition of the competition. The work was carried out within the framework of Annex 74 “Competition and Living Lab Platform” of the International Energy Agency and an EC funded project named “Solar Decathlon Europe - Analysis of the Results”. The analysis was based on the development of a web based knowledge platform, providing a large set of information and monitored data from past competitions. Based on the availability of information and data, the comparative evaluation is centred on the building energy supply systems and their performance. Starting with very large PV systems, the latest competitions rules trigger the teams to apply systems sized comparable to small buildings in net zero energy building practice. As a result not all houses succeed in a positive energy balance. Due to the wider introduction of batteries the self-consumption of the solar yield and the degree of self-sufficiency increases. New developments of the competition rules stimulate the energy flexibility in operation with the power grid. Modifications for the rules and the monitoring procedure for the next edition intend to further link the competition to building science.
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  Building Energy Competition & Living Lab Knowledge Platform 
  January 2019
  Editor(s): Karsten Voss, Susanne Hendel
  This knowledge platform is a major activity to secure the information, experiences and data from building energy competitions such as the Solar Decathlon and living labs worldwide. It adds to the Solar Decathlon US information system (http://solardecathlon.gov) and the individual websites of the events or living labs.
  
  The work on the platform is part of Annex 74 (http://annex74.iea-ebc.org) of the Energy in Buildings & Communities Programme of the International Energy Agency. The platform is based on a content management system and the use of standardized fact sheets to structure, filter and transfer information. All buildings of the competitions and living labs are detailed, documented and linked to an interactive map with the connected universities. The knowledge platform also serves as the central storage space for all competition documents, such as project manuals, drawings, publications, communications initiatives, pictures, reports, evaluations, scorings as well as detailed monitoring data.
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  The SOLAR DECATHLON Knowledge Platform – Concept and Application (PDF 0.53MB) 
  October 2018
  Author(s): Susanne Hendel
  Publisher: 12. EuroSun Conference International Conference on Solar Energy for Buildings and Industry, Rapperswil, Switzerland 2018
  The student competition Solar Decathlon (SD) is an established test case and platform to demonstrate and analyze approaches to energy efficiency and solar energy utilization in residential buildings. All available documents for the SD are stored in a newly launched online platform, which is the base for the analyses of the technologies applied. Information is stored in a unified way to allow an intensified use of the knowledge gathered from SD houses. The advantages of an integrated technology search function will be addressed by the paper.