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Sustainable house brings technology innovation to Tempe Center for the Arts

dasHaus, a fully functional demonstration of a renewable energy system from Germany, celebrated its grand opening Monday morning. dasHaus is located outside of Tempe Center for the Arts and welcomes visitors to learn more about energy efficiency. (Photo by Marissa Krings)
dasHaus, a fully functional demonstration of a renewable energy system from Germany, celebrated its grand opening Monday morning. dasHaus is located outside of Tempe Center for the Arts and welcomes visitors to learn more about energy efficiency. (Photo by Marissa Krings)

DasHaus, a traveling prototype of sustainable housing construction, opened Monday at the Tempe Center for the Arts, focusing on Arizona as an ideal incubator of sustainable technology.

As part of a collaboration between Tempe, ASU and the German American Chamber of Commerce, this is dasHaus’s third stop in its 12-city tour. The prototype arrived in Tempe last week in three crates.

DasHaus will remain on the TCA lawn until Jan. 30.

Several sustainability professionals in technology, politics and academics held a panel discussion following the grand opening of dasHaus titled, “The Net-Zero House: Optimal Conditions in the Valley of the Sun.”

The panelists discussed the marketability and feasibility of sustainable technology in Arizona.

Panel host and senior vice president of the ASU Foundation Duke Reiter said he hopes dasHaus will be a precursor to the U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon, an event Tempe applied to host in 2013.

The decathlon consists of 20 sustainable houses constructed by collegiate teams competing to be the best in terms of sustainability, affordability and design excellence. The decathlon currently takes place at the National Mall in Washington D.C.

“It’s about building a solar narrative here,” Reiter said.

German teams won the decathlon in 2007 and 2009, Reiter said, but the University of Maryland’s team won last year. The Solar Decathlon has been held every two years since 2002.

Panelist Rudy Vetter, the senior vice president of international economic development at the Greater Phoenix Economic Council, moved to Arizona six years ago from Germany.

Germany has been using sustainable technology since 1973, Vetter said.

“We’re late in the game, but (the U.S. is) catching up really fast,” he said.

The panelists referred to the Valley as an ideal location to pioneer solar technology.

“We, in Arizona, are really leaders in sustainability,” said Charlie Popeck, president of Green Ideas Sustainability Consultants. “A lot of people don’t know that.”

ASU has embraced sustainability and solar technology, said Harvey Bryan, senior sustainability scientist for the global institute of sustainability and Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts professor.

Bryan has been involved in sustainability research at ASU since he was a student at ASU in the ‘70s.

Oil alternatives were a trend in the U.S. and Germany after the 1973 oil crisis, but the technology was only feasible for tinkerers who could fix their solar panels each week, he said.

“It certainly has become more bullet proof,” Bryan said.

Bryan said the University is looking at different leasing models to make sustainable technology more marketable.

“It’s not just technology,” Bryan said. “It’s coming up with exciting new financial models.”

ASU students are also coming up with new technologies, Bryan said.

LightWorks, the organization that manages all of ASU’s solar research, is looking to biofuels and photosynthetic algae as potential energy sources.

“I’ve been trying to kill (algae) for years, and now people are telling me it’s worth something,” Bryan said.

 

Reach the reporter at Michelle.Peirano@asu.edu

 

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