The University of Wollongong (Team UOW Australia) has won the 2013 Solar Decathlon China, with their Illawarra Flame Australia house.

The house is a demonstration of how typical Australian homes built in the 1950-60s can be retrofitted with a wide range of environmentally advanced technologies – thereby avoiding many of the environmental impacts that would have resulted from building a new home from scratch. This was the first time a retrofitted home was entered in a decathlon.
“The idea of demonstrating a retrofit for our Solar Decathlon China entry originated from our Academic Coordinator, Professor Paul Cooper. He recognised the importance of tackling the issue of our existing housing stock – not just aiming for energy efficiency in new build houses,” Jack Breen, Marketing and Communications Manager of Team UOW, said.

“This fits with the University of Wollongong’s Sustainable Buildings Research Centre’s main research focus of retrofitting existing buildings. The team clearly understands that as a society with the goal of a sustainable future, we need to find an effective way to make our existing houses energy efficient – in a way that is beautiful, functional and affordable.”

To help them achieve this goal, Schneider Electric has donated a C-Bus Control system, along with occupancy and light sensors, sweep fan control relay, a 6.4 inch C-Touch colour touch screen, and other complementary products.

“The C-Bus System allows the occupant of the house to control the lighting, air conditioning and ventilation and to monitor the energy use. By making energy use visible, the occupants can then identify ways to reduce it. This is very important as the most significant effect on energy use is the behavior of the occupant.”

The team is collaborating with TAFE Illawarra Institute, and the skills and knowledge gained from the project are being passed on to tradesmen, and future tradesmen.

“The research from our involvement in the project will live on and continue at the Sustainable Buildings Research Centre (SBRC) as the house becomes a living laboratory,” Jack said.

“We will also be researching different tiers of a retrofit and the payoff periods for each of them.”