Solar Decathlon Europe 2014

The third edition of Solar Decathlon Europe (SDE) will take place on June 28 – July 14 in Versailles, France. There will be twenty competing teams mostly from Europe and Asia. For the first time in Solar Decathlon history, the host city has built a Solar Decathlon Village to house all the competitors and teams are required to design to the conditions of their home country rather than the host country. The Solar Decathlon is an international competition created by the U.S. Department of Energy in which universities from all over the world meet to design, build and operate a grid-connected, energetically self-sufficient house. The houses use solar energy as the only energy source and are equipped with all the technologies that permit maximum energy efficiency. During the final phase of the competition, teams assemble their houses on the event site while undergoing the ten contests of the competition and visited by the general public. These ten contests make this event a Decathlon. The Solar Decathlon Europe (SDE) was created through a signed agreement between the Ministry of Housing of the Government of Spain and the U.S. government in October 2007 in order to organize a sustainable solar house competition in Europe.