Solar Decathlon

Following years of research and development, an accidental fire and rebuild, and around a month in the Dubai desert, Virginia Tech students have won the 2018 Solar Decathlon Middle East with the FutureHaus. The prefabricated modular home runs from solar power and was assembled in under two days.

Lots of houses nowadays are designed to minimize the amount of energy they use and to generate their own electricity. Fewer, though, are designed to withstand extreme coastal weather conditions as well. The high-tech and feature-loaded Sure House does all of this.

US Solar Decathlon 2015 competitors the University of Texas at Austin and Munich's Technische Universität München have teamed-up to produce NexusHaus, a concept sustainable home that runs solely on solar power, and focuses on water efficiency.

The results are finally in for this year's European Solar Decathlon competition. Gizmag was in Paris over the weekend to take a closer look at the prototype sustainable houses.

Many homes in Taiwan feature illegal makeshift shelters on their rooftops to provide extra living space. A team of architects has developed a concept house which would give these shelters a greenhouse-inspired makeover and shift reliance to renewable sources of energy.

A team of Delft University students has developed a concept for a solar-powered skin to be fitted to the typical Dutch home, better aligning its energy usage with 21st century power demands.

The Empowerhouse won first prize in the Affordability category of the 2011 US Solar Decathlon and was redesigned to become the first house in the city of Washington, DC built to Passive House standards. Its first family speak of a brighter future in their ultra-energy-efficient home.

Team Austria (Vienna University of Technology) has been announced the overall winner of Solar Decathlon 2013 after the closest competition in the history of the event. Second place went to University of Nevada Las Vegas, with the Czech Technical University achieving third place overall.

Illawarra Flame is a net-zero house, but wasn't always that way. The environmentally-friendly house was formerly an energy-inefficient "fibro house" – that is, until students from the University of Wollongong got hold of it.

SCI-Arc and Caltech students joined forces to produce a net-zero micro-home concept dubbed "DALE," which expands in size to offer more living space.

The French Rhone Alpes team has won this year’s European Solar Decathlon with its Canopea modular home concept.

The Romanian Solar Decathlon team has presented its innovative solar-powered prefab home, which looks good enough to move into.