ITHACA, N.Y. -- The walls are up, the roof is on and the summer crew of Cornell University's Solar Decathlon Team is working hard to finish its fully functional, self-sufficient, solar-powered house.

Scheduled for completion by the end of June, the only solar-powered house from an Ivy League school to enter the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) international Solar Decathlon competition will be moved to the National Mall in Washington, D.C., in time for the Oct. 7 to 16 competition.

The team consists of about 50 undergraduate students from six of the seven undergraduate colleges at Cornell -- about 40 percent of them engineering majors, 40 percent architecture majors, 10 percent business or economics majors and 10 percent with other majors -- as well as a handful of graduate students. Some of the undergraduates have been designing and building the solar home for more than two years. About a dozen students will work on the house throughout the summer, testing, adjusting and refining it. 

The DOE challenged competitors to design and build an 800-square-foot sustainable house that derives all its power from the sun. The houses will be evaluated on criteria ranging from power acquisition and storage and everyday performance to advocating the use of household solar power to potential users. In addition to designing and building the home, decathlon teams also participate in 10 contests during the competition week in which the houses will be judged on such criteria as comfort and how well they perform in providing energy for heating and cooling, hot water, lights and appliances. 

"The students will show us how we can live with abundance and comfort in beautiful, energy-efficient, completely solar-powered homes," says the DOE Web site.

In addition to designing and building the home and soliciting donations for the house's systems, appliances, furniture and finishing, the team has conducted an extensive outreach effort. "We have developed sustainability and alternative energy programs for local schools," says Melissa Wrolstad, an incoming senior from Libertyville, Ill., majoring in mechanical and aerospace engineering, who serves as the team's outreach coordinator. "Our aim is to spread renewable energy awareness to students, schools and parents and to encourage teachers to make sustainable energy a part of their curriculum."

The team also is producing a documentary on the project that will be narrated by Bill Nye '77, a Frank H.T. Rhodes Class of '56 University Professor-at-Large at Cornell.

In 2003 10 undergraduates submitted a proposal to the DOE, which accepted the proposal and gave the team $5,000 in seed money. Since then, the team has recruited dozens of students to participate and has raised about $65,000 in cash from about 15 individuals, mostly alumni, and another $120,000 in product donations from about two dozen companies. The entirely student-run project also has received funding from Cornell's College of Engineering and the College of Architecture, Art and Planning (AAP). 

"Although we estimate that the whole project will cost about $250,000, including the cost of donated items, we think that the house could be replicated in the future for as little as $60,000," says Emile Chin-Dickey, Arts and Sciences '05, an economics major from Fairbanks, Alaska, who serves as business manager of the project.

The 16-by-40-foot house consists of a living room/study/kitchen, bedroom and bathroom, numerous nooks and crannies for storage and a large array of photovoltaic cells, an evacuated solar tube collector and a large battery bank to collect and store enough energy to run all the appliances in the house as well as an electrically powered car. All the house's systems will be controlled by a touchscreen remote. It will be fully furnished and landscaped (with portable trays full of grass, shrubs and flowers) when it joins the solar village in Washington, D.C., to compete against 17 other college and university teams. 

"One of the most unique aspects of the house is a Cornell-designed, small-scale desiccant cooling system," says Tim Fu, Engineering '05, from Arlington, Va., one of the major forces behind the project from the beginning and one of its project leaders. Desiccants are materials that absorb moisture (such as those found in pill jars and computer packaging). "The invention boosts the efficiency of the house's air conditioning system by mediating its humidity and temperature," he explains. 

Project leaders also include Stephanie Horowitz, Architecture '05, of Princeton, N.J., and Benjamin Uyeda, a graduate student in architecture from Santa Barbara, Calif., who also have been on the project from the beginning. Although Fu, Horowitz, Uyeda and Chin-Dickey graduated in May, they all are putting their futures on hold until the October competition. 

Zellman Warhaft, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, has been serving as the project's adviser from the beginning. Nick Rajkovich, visiting lecturer in AAP, is serving as an adviser and the building coordinator over the summer.