Photo: Solar Decathlon Europe
This house, offering 70 square meters of living space, draws all the power needed to heat, cool, and light the building—and to charge an electric vehicle—from the sun. The structure, built in just 11 days by a team of university students from Rhône-Alpes, France, beat out houses built by 17 other student teams from around the world to win the Solar Decathlon Europe 2012 competition, held in Madrid in September. Each of the houses was judged in 10 categories focusing on the buildings’ architecture, energy efficiency, and comfort.












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Willie Jones
Willie Jones is an associate editor at IEEE Spectrum. In addition to editing and planning daily coverage, he manages several of Spectrum's newsletters and contributes regularly to the monthly Big Picture section that appears in the print edition.
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