Echo: A house inspired to become the new Canadian home

By Laura Garzón  | Apr 11, 2013  | http://www.digitaljournal.com

The future is here, or in Ontario to be more precise, where university and college students are building a net zero energy house to represent Canada at the Solar Decathlon worldwide competition organized by the U.S. Department of Energy.

The contest will take place from October 3 through 13 at the Orange County Great Park in Irvine, California. Its purpose is to allow students to plan, create, build and operate a house able to generate more energy than it will use over the course of one year, explained Mike Brown, 26, a mechanical engineer master’s student from Carleton University.

Brown is one of the members of Team Ontario, the Carleton University, Queen’s University and Algonquin College partnership that is competing against 19 other teams from around the world, including the Canadian team from Calgary.

Team Ontario counts more than a hundred students and faculty members who dedicate their free time to work on their house project called Echo. Echo because Team Ontario wants their idea to resonate for generations to come with one main purpose: to create a new standard of living. “The idea is to set a path to a more sustainable future”, Brown said.

To achieve a net zero house, the team will use both solar photovoltaic panels to create electricity, and solar thermal technology, which Brown explained, “does not use the sunlight to generate electricity, but stores the heat directly”. Wilkie Choi, a mechanical engineering student from Queen’s University, currently working on the project, explained their unique system: “It integrates heating, cooling, dehumidifying as well as domestic hot water demands”. For example, he explained, “when doing air conditioning, it is able to take the heat from the house and use it to generate hot water instead”.

Team Ontario is able to make use of a test facility at Queens University, where they are able to build and simulate the system. Portia Murray, 22, from the mechanical engineer team said, “We have a lot of people working on each individual component. Putting them together is definitely going to be a challenge”.

The U.S. Department of Energy launched its first competition in 2002; the contest has since taken place every two years. Throughout the years, the contest has brought together more than 112 teams, which are asked to submit a proposal in advance for the competition, according to their website. For the 2013 competition, less than half the teams that applied were chosen, said Christina Kielich, the U.S. Department of Energy press officer. Team Ontario first tried to enter the competition in 2011. At the time the group of students was limited to Carleton and Queen’s Universities, and even though their idea made it to top 25, it was not enough to compete. Their achievement however became an incentive for students to work harder for the next competition, Brown said. This time around the team was part of the top 20 group. This meant Echo had to become a physical reality, which; included its design, construction and testing.

Currently the team is in the construction phase, and one of the biggest challenges is that Echo has to be disassembled, shipped to California and assembled in about nine days, explained construction manager Jacob Morgan, from Algonquin College. Morgan also has a personal goal to achieve in California besides winning the competition. It is“to prove to ourselves that we can do better than what we thought”. Morgan joined the team in January 2011, and he is currently working with 22 other construction students at Algonquin’s Perth Campus on the construction of Echo. Tyler Warren, 20, another member of the construction team, saw the project as an opportunity to put his knowledge into practice. “My goal is to one day be able to build more of these houses all over the place, cut down electrical bills and also create a new kind of product to help improve housing development” Warren said.

Team Ontario was inspired by Ottawa’s weather to create the house’s system. Echo is projected to become a suburban home in Canada’s capital. “In the winter we run a working fluid called glycol through the solar panel that is able to absorb the heat from the sun and it will come into the house at about 20 degrees Celsius” explained Choi. “We then put it through a heat pump, which makes it even hotter and that gives us hot water to use as well for space heating”. In terms of electricity, he explained, they will use an array of PV panels, as part of a photovoltaic system. The system converts solar energy into electricity. “The goal is that over the term of a year it will be able to come out to be a net zero or net plus”, Choi said.

The competition consists of 10 contests. “These contests are designed to gauge how well the houses perform and how livable and affordable they are. Each contest is worth a maximum of 100 points, for a competition total of 1,000 points” explains the website link. To achieve it all, Team Ontario is a 100 percent sponsorship driven. Businesses or people, who would like to support the team, may do so by contacting Team Ontario on their Facebook page.

By the end of the summer Echo has to be ready for final testing. “We are planning on putting sensors all over the place, measuring heat transfers through the walls, the performance of different systems, fine-tuning things as we have to”, Brown said. Thus, the house has to be fully furnished according to the requirements. In the meantime, Jad Robitaille, 29, from Queens University, is helping her team stay on track, focusing on the interior design of Echo. Her job is to find out the sourcing of the material, making sure it is sustainable and local, Robitaille explained. Yi Quan, 20, is a member of the business team; she is in charge of the marketing, finance and accounting. She is also responsible for finding the different supplies and making sure that “each and every room fits with the other in terms of material selection and colour scheme”, Quan said.