LEAFHouse Project Managers Brittany Williams, Kim Singleton, and Nirmal Mehta participated in the October Department of Energy (DOE) conference call. The purpose of the monthly call by the Solar Decathlon contest organizers is to coordinate and disseminate information the participating schools.

The call began at 12 noon Eastern Standard Time; easily attended by the Maryland team since it was lunchtime on the east coast. For the farthest east Solar Decathlon Team at the Technische Universität Darmstadt in Germany it was 6PM. For the westernmost Decathlon students at Santa Clara University in California, it was 9AM.

Every caller placed their phone on mute while the DOE opened with general contest updates. On this conference call, the DOE spent time discussing an upcoming team-wide workshop held to be held in January.

Each of the twenty universities participating in the Decathlon will send eight representatives to Washington, D.C. These teams will cycle through stations at the workshop to meet in person with DOE personnel. This process will allow the teams to receive immediate feedback on their house designs regarding building codes, ADA accessibility, tour routes and other logistics for the National Mall.

Workshop preparation discussed by the DOE included having teams provide updated drawings at the workshop that showed the proposed location of sensors for the light, energy and temperature monitoring. The DOE requested detailed drawings so that the organizers will know where runs for the official monitoring equipment will be within each solar home.

Another item the DOE stressed was that each team consider Building Integrated Photovoltaics (BIPV) in their home. The DOE encouraged planning ahead to incorporate solar panels and architecture in a seamless package, since this will be reflected in architecture judging.

A question and answer period followed the DOE discussion. The conference call adjourned an hour later.