A Place in the Sun: Cornell Solar House Auction April 7

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Cornell University is auctioning its award-winning Solar Decathlon House, which secured second place in the 2005 competition, on April 7 at 12:05 p.m. The 640-square-foot solar-powered home will be displayed on the Ag Quad, with open house events scheduled for April 1, 2, and the morning of the auction. The 2007 Solar Decathlon Team will host a reception in the house following the auction. Discussions around the house include concerns about the durability of solar panels in extreme weather, with suggestions that they may be adjustable for safety during hurricanes. Additionally, some participants shared their own experiences with solar power and self-sufficiency, emphasizing the potential for sustainable living through dispersed populations in areas with ample sunlight.
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Cornell's award-winning solar house to be auctioned April 7
By Susan S. Lang

To give everyone an equal chance for a place in the sun, Cornell University will hold a public auction to sell off its Solar Decathlon House, second-place winner in the U.S. Department of Energy's 2005 international competition. The auction for the solar-powered, 640-square-foot home will begin Friday, April 7, at 12:05 p.m. on the Ag Quad, where the house is temporarily on display.

Open house is slated for April 1 and 2, 1 to 3 p.m., as well as Friday, April 7, 10 a.m. to noon, just before the sale.

The 2007 Solar Decathlon Team, which is starting to design its house for the 2007 competition in Washington, D.C., will sponsor a reception in the solar house immediately after the auction.
http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/March06/solar.house.auction.ssl.html
 
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Looks like those solar panels will rip right off in a hurricane. Very small too.
 
Mayhap those are for use in Nevada.
 
BobK said:
Looks like those solar panels will rip right off in a hurricane. Very small too.
I am guessing angle can be adjusted depending on a position of the sun. During a hurricane panels can be lowered to horizontal position.
 
Nice, but I already have a solar-powered house. It's a small (~1000 ft2) well-insulated log home with a wood stove and an oil furnace as a backup. The winter has been warmer that usual, but still, it's pretty nice to be able to heat your house on only 3 cords of wood and practically no oil. I have over 8 acres of solar-powered woodlot, and can probably heat this place as long as I live by cutting and burning only dead or damaged trees. I cut up a diseased white ash a couple of days ago and got close to 2/3 cord of wood for next winter, and there's a whole lot more where that came from. We can be a whole lot more self-sufficient as a species if we are willing to disperse instead of concentrating our populations, but I don't see that happening.
 
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Aren't the areas that receive the most intense sunlight in pretty non-hurricaney areas of the country in the US? :)
 

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