ECE junior leads Race to Zero team to finalists for grand prize

Just outside of Allerton Park in Monticello, Illinois, lies an old cottage in an expansive vista, wind tracing patterns in the grass around it as the Midwestern sun bakes its wooden frame. Farmland spreads out into the horizon, and the one-floor house dominates the landscape for at least a mile. 

Illinois’ Solar Decathlon teams were grand prize finalists at the Department of Energy’s Race to Zero competition in Golden, Colorado for its plan to renovate and overhaul this property, which would turn it into a net-zero energy use home. It's called the Sun Catcher cottage.

Team President Connor Bogner, a junior electrical engineering major, described the Illinois effort as a group of “30 great student members actually researching, designing, and simulating to make our project come through.” 

Team Illinois regularly participates in Solar Decathlon, a bi-annual competition put on by the U.S. Department of Energy to challenge 20 college teams to design and build solar-powered homes, which are then rated on a number of criteria, such as architecture, comfort zone, and market appeal. 

Race to Zero is a similar competition, also hosted by the Department of Energy, but while Solar Decathlon requires teams to physically build a house every two years they participate, Race to Zero simply requires floor plans and a design proposal. Team Illinois decided to participate in Race to Zero to effectively teach students about sustainable building practices while the RSO was in between Solar Decathlon competitions. 

“Race to Zero was exactly what we were looking for,” Bogner said. “It was a way to engage students in green building, gain experience, and become effective leaders for our next solar decathlon.”

Having decided to participate, the next phase was selecting whether to develop an entirely new plan, or create a plan to modify an existing building. The team decided to retrofit an existing home to bring attention to the wave of aging Americans homes in need of energy-saving renovations.

The median age of the American home is 35 years, huge numbers of houses are eligible to be retrofitted; and the time and cost to retrofit an old home to reach zero energy specifications vastly improve over the same resources required to build a new one. Because  retrofitting will be such a significant part of America’s home energy revolution, it only made sense for the team to focus on getting experience doing it. 

The team then chose the specific cottage near Allerton Park, a home that was built in the 1940s, for its iconic representation of a traditional Midwestern farmstead. According to the team’s project proposal, the cottage will “serve as a model for hundreds of thousands of Midwestern homes awaiting an affordable deep energy retrofit.” 

The Race to Zero team was divided into several sub-teams covering various design implementations on the cottage like lighting, architecture, and electric installation, and each sub-team relied on the work of the other sub-teams to move forward. Throughout the project, Bogner was amazed by the dedication and work that everyone kept putting in to make the Sun Catcher  project a success. 

“Toward the end, some of the students even pulled all-nighters to make sure everything was done,” Bogner said. “That’s why I like being part of solar decathlon – I’m surrounded by inspired students.” 

Throughout the team’s retrofitting process, students paid special attention to preserving as much of the original home as possible. The project’s ultimate goal was not to demolish and rebuild the cottage as they saw fit, but rather create “a building that is a high performance version of its older self,” according to their proposal, to preserve the historical value of the old farmstead, minimize waste and limit the project’s consumption of new building materials. 

As the competition neared, students got their last design ideas in, and finalized the proposal. The team flew to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory last spring in Golden, Colorado, to present their work. They made it to the prestigious grand prize finalists, a spot which only three other teams out of the full 33 reached. Bogner attributes their success to a desire to genuinely expand their knowledge and experiment with green renovation. 

“To us the competition was more than about winning; it was about proving that we had ideas that were worth sharing beyond the university,” Bogner said. “I think the Sun Catcher Cottage explored retrofitting beyond what was convention and that is why we placed well in Colorado.” 

Since the competition’s end, the team now gearing up for its participation in the next few competitions, and is considering on implementing physical renovations on the Sun Catcher in the coming semesters. The students involved gained an immense amount of experience which they hope to channel both in future competitions and after they graduate, but as proud as they are, there’s always more to experience, more skills to hone. 

“I'm not done learning, nor do I ever expect to be,” Bogner said.