IIT-Bombay’s solar-powered house to shine in China competition
Shunya House is the only entry from India into the Solar Decathlon 2018 — a collegiate competition by the US Department of Energy and China National Energy Administration, where 10 contests would challenge student teams to design and build full-size solar-powered houses.
FOR A team of 60 students from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Bombay, two years of hard work bore fruit on Friday afternoon with the inauguration of the ‘Shunya House’ — a fully-furnished three-room house that has zero requirement of energy. Shunya, short for ‘Sustainable Habitat for an Urbanising Nation by Young Aspirants’, is an 1,800-square-feet state-of-the-art apartment, which can accommodate six persons.
“This is a hybrid house. So, it can be altered to suit whatever the client could want. Unlike regular houses, it is composed of steel and not concrete, which increases its life and reusability,” said Shivram G Krishnan, the operations manager of the team. Shunya House is the only entry from India into the Solar Decathlon 2018 — a collegiate competition by the US Department of Energy and China National Energy Administration, where 10 contests would challenge student teams to design and build full-size solar-powered houses.
On July 1, the team is expected to leave for Dezhou in China, where the competition begins on June 9. As part of the competition, the teams would have to set up the house within 21 days and be judged a jury of three across 10 parameters, including communication, comfort, engineering and construction. Devang Khakhar, Director of IIT-Bombay, inaugurated the house on Friday and described it as “a tremendous achievement”.
Initially, the team had to face multiple setbacks after the Chinese organisers of the decathlon postponed it by a year due to elections in their country. The team had to be constituted again, as several members had graduated in 2017. “There was a lot of chaos. We had to reconstitute the whole team… only two members from the old team remained after China postponed the competition. We also had to face trouble raising funds,” said Rangan Banerjee, head of the Department of Energy Science and Engineering.
The delay, however, gave the team more time to prepare for the competition, said Feba Varghese, communications head of the team. “We understand that it is a huge competition. We have to compete against teams from 20 countries like Korea, the US, Israel and Korea. However, we are quite positive and hope that we would perform our best,” said Varghese.
“Challenges remain like language barriers and the 16-hour limit on working hours. We also have to ensure that the moral of the team does not go down,” said Krishnan.
Source: indianexpress
