The top 20 teams got a unique invitation: to transport the houses, by truck or ship, piece by piece, from their schools to the Mall in Washington, D.C., the strip between the Washington Monument and the Capitol. The Energy Department gives each finalist team $100,000 to defray the transportation costs, although that’s a drop in the bucket compared to the total amount some of these teams spent on their homes: up to $1 million, usually from donations and alumni.
There they were, last month: 20 houses, reassembled, arrayed in a little solar village, fully operational and open to the public. (You can see a lot of photos at www.solardecathlon.org.)
::Tullycast:: 