Solar Decathlon Houses Make Up a Solar Village to Test Microgrid Technology

New Hampshire, USA -- In yet one more example of the rising interest in how microgrids that incorporate renewable energy and energy storage will change the energy landscape, Missouri University of Science and Technology (MST) has created what it says is the first “Solar Village” in the U.S.

Consisting of a grouping of Solar Decathlon houses that students at MST built for competitions between 2002 and 2009, the solar village is a project created in collaboration with Missouri S&T students, faculty and staff, along with members of the university’s microgrid advisory board (Investor-owned utility Ameren, City Utilities of Springfield, Rolla Municipal Utilities and Electric Power Research Institute), several Missouri manufacturers (Milbank and Ford Motor Company) and the Army Corps of Engineers. The engineer-of-record and installer for the project was Microgrid Solar, a U.S. and Caribbean solar developer, installer, and engineering company based in St. Louis, MO.

The project has been in the works for two years and is expected to be complete by the end of next month.  A utility grant and the DOE Sunshot Initiative contributed funding for the project.

Project Specs

There are four former Solar Decathlon houses in the microgrid. The buildings each have 5- to 10-kW PV systems and there is a mix of crystalline silicon PV and thin film.  The buildings also have solar thermal systems for hot water.  The energy storage components consist of two 100 kW / 100 kWh lithium-ion iron nano-phosphate battery racks that were donated by A123 Systems. There is also a fuel cell and a heat recovery unit as part of the microgrid.

Graduate students currently live and work in the houses, which also include electric vehicle charging stations. The microgrid is built so that it can island from the utility grid indefinitely.

Even though the military has been designing microgrids for ten years now, the project is a first “from the perspective of testing new designs and new equipment in a very closely monitored research setting,” according to Marc Lopata, PE, the Principal Engineer on this project and President of Microgrid Solar.  “We have the capability to power any of the houses independently from the grid or the central plant,” he said. “And we have the capability to plug in new equipment for testing and do graduate level experimentation.”