Gov’t Built Solar House Falls Apart

[Roscoe]

Green Follies: Gov’t Built Solar House Falls Apart

Gov't Green Fail At Its Best/Worst

Posted by Warner Todd Huston

Wednesday, May 20th at 6:02AM EDT


Hailed as a completely self-sustaining building, the solar house at the Troy Community Center in Troy, Michigan was set to open for tours and community use this Summer. Unfortunately, the systems failed to work over the winter, pipes froze, and water burst through the uninhabited structure causing the floors to collapse. As a result, the building sits unused after the hundreds of thousands of dollars wasted on it by government.

This is government waste and folly at it worst, but it is typical of the best government can do. Oh, it’s not the best because anything worked, it’s the best because failure is all one can expect from government when undertaking projects of this nature.

The model house was supposed to be an engineering marvel that would save the planet. But ended up being just a monstrous waste of the taxpayer’s money.

In April of last year, the news was all of the excitement.

A team of more than 40 Lawrence Tech students called ALOeTERRA (which means “to nourish the earth”) designed and built the house last year. Volunteers from the Michigan Regional Council of Carpenters and Millrights also lent a hand creating a home that harnesses the sunlight into enough electricity to power the home’s utilities (along with some left over for a small electric vehicle).

But only a year later, it was all about the disappointment and finger pointing.

It was supposed to be a shining example of the green movement — a completely independent solar-powered house with no gas or electrical hookups.

Seven months ago, officials gathered for a ribbon-cutting ceremony to celebrate the $900,000 house owned by the city of Troy that was to be used as an educational tool and meeting spot.

But it never opened to the public. And it remains closed.

Oh, there are all sorts of reasons why this engineering marvel was an utter failure. There is finger pointing and head scratching all around. But the singular fact of the matter is that this project is a failure because it was not undertaken by business in a situation where success meant fulfilling a business plan to satisfy investors in order to obtain profit.

No, it was a dalliance by professors financed by government without any expectations or requirements for success. Further, everyone involved knew that any loss would be absorbed by the tax payers and would result in no consequences of blame for failure. No one had any reason to be precise. No one had any pressure to succeed.

So, once again We The People get fleeced by university professors and fraudulent government spending.

But, heck. They meant well, right? That is the salve for all wounds, after all.

http://www.redstate.com/warner_todd_...e-falls-apart/

[Ron61]

I hope this isn't a sign of what will happen to the car companies once the Govt. takes them over.

Ron

[Joe Wicked]

I guess Ford will be the token of American Quality. If that is how the GM and Chrysler Cars will be, it won't take long and Americans will not buy them anymore. Bad part is they will probably lump Ford into the same quality category, and they will suffer too even though they are not a part of it.

[Wayne Maybury]

You would think that at least one person would have had the sense to say, lets put in a small back up system in case something goes wrong with the primary system. This place is a prototype, not a proven design. It doesn't take a genius to know that initial designs require tweaking. Of course this was a government project so no one gives a damn.

The real problem is that maybe they were onto something good but this disaster is going to set the entire program back because the people running it were too stupid to think that maybe they could not be completely right.

Wayne

[Bill Bess]

Sounds like what they needed was an experienced general contractor, an experienced designer to verify if the darn thing would hold up and to make sure normal building codes were met.
I have no problem with folks coming up with new ideas especially for "green houses", but I think in this case they should have just built a green house for growing plants and save us tax payers from the loss.
Backup systems and proper insulation etc. might have saved the day. Bill

[computerworks]

"redstate.com"? Well, that kinda negates any validity.

What's troubling is ..more and more of these nihilist bloggers are just down on America and the American will to succeed...it's just anti-American propaganda.

Roscoe, when did you become so anti-American?

Originally Posted by Roscoe

No one had any reason to be precise. No one had any pressure to succeed.

I find that hard to swallow and insulting to the American people and the talent in Michigan.

[VRM]

Originally Posted by computerworks

"redstate.com"? Well, that kinda negates any validity.

What's troubling is ..more and more of these nihilist bloggers are just down on America and the American will to succeed...it's just anti-American propaganda.

Roscoe, when did you become so anti-American?

I find that hard to swallow and insulting to the American people and the talent in Michigan.

CW,
Don't sweat it - I have it on good authority that we are not able to design and build a bunch of cars with an average of 35.5mpg either.
Obama's wants 35.5mpg by 2016

I'm glad the folks on CC were able to set me straight before I wasted all kinds of time trying to solve some engineering problems. I'm told praying works...

Steve

[392cobra]

Originally Posted by computerworks

...it's just anti-American propaganda.

Roscoe, when did you become so anti-American?



I find that hard to swallow and insulting to the American people and the talent in Michigan.

How is it anti-American to point out the fact 40 Students and some Union Workers failed and wasted a lot of taxpayers money ?

Are the Union Workers & Students part of the Short Bus crowd where everyone is Special and deserves a trophy no matter how badly they fail ?
That mentality seems unAmerican to me and almost certain to foster more failure.

[1ntCobra]

Originally Posted by 392cobra

How is it anti-American to point out the fact 40 Students and some Union Workers failed and wasted a lot of taxpayers money ?

Are the Union Workers & Students part of the Short Bus crowd where everyone is Special and deserves a trophy no matter how badly they fail ?
That mentality seems unAmerican to me and almost certain to foster more failure.

I think you are being a bit over the top in your criticism of a student project. A couple of decades ago when I went to college, one of the engineering departments was involved student project that built solar powered cars for a national competition among colleges. It might have been an annual thing or every few years. In any case, would I consider a prototype vehicle, something that I would expect someone to sell or use after the student project is over? I think they might store the thing for a while, perhaps disassemble it to get some parts out of it and then trash the rest of it. It is a student project, not a real world vehicle that you would expect to take on a real highway, expect to carry passengers/cargo and expect to have a service life of a couple hundred thousand miles.

Keep in mind that the student project solar house was one of many built by a number of colleges in a competition. I expect that most of them ended up disassembled, recycled and trashed. I doubt anyone expected anyone to live in or use a student project, yet this one ends up apparently neglected in a park and nobody is around to notice pipes breaking. Nobody bothered to insure the thing. I'm surprised it was not vandalized and covered with graffiti too.

My undergraduate senior project in college was some software for a series of software engineering courses. I don't even remember what it did, but I do remember who was on my team. The software certainly was not commercialized or sold. It was just erased off the computer when our accounts expired.

Let me guess. Your senior project in college was practical, commercialized and you, your fellow students, your school and your sponsors made billions of dollars off of it. And now you have plenty of free time on your hands to gloat of your success and point out the failures of all the other millions of senior college projects that just got us a grade.

[392cobra]

Originally Posted by 1ntCobra

I think you are being a bit over the top in your criticism of a student project.

In my non-PC world...An F is a F. The project failed.

No Short Bus Trophies.

[VRM]

Originally Posted by 392cobra

In my non-PC world...An F is a F. The project failed.

No Short Bus Trophies.

Fred,
Maybe you should take a look at a few less biased writeups as the guy who wrote this article had no idea what he was talking about.

According to Lawrence Tech U someobody was making some modifications and switched off a circuit breaker and forgot to turn it back on. It ended up causing about $16K wort of damage.

The house was initially paid for by private individuals and corporate sponsors - the $900K included transportation to Washington DC. The real cost of the house was about $550K. The house was given by the Troy Chamber of Commerce to the City of Troy, and the city is now responsible for the maintenance costs.

The house was in a competition against 20 other solar powered houses from Cornell, MIT and others - and took second place. Looks like it served its purpose very well - good thing you are not giving out the grades for the project.

I personaly would congratulate them - scoring a second aginst some heavy hitters like MIT was probably not an easy thing. But you go ahead and give them an 'F' 'cause engineering talent like yours and Roscoes is just real hard to come by.

I'd like to see an apology from you and Roscoe to them before this thread gets closed - those LTU folks deserve a LOT better than what they got from the two of you.

Mods, my apologies if this is a bit too personal but I am really sick of these uninformed hit pieces posing as news - and I am especially not fond of attacks on other engineer types not present to defend themselves by people who would not have a bloody idea where to begin to achieve even half of what those students did.

Sorry for the rant - this is the second time I've ever reacted emotionally on this forum.

Steve

[J. T. Toad]

I read this on fox news a while back.

It truly amazes me how asinine the public can be in the naivete of practical application and understanding of environmental science.

As a solar generator myself, I find it comical that this flawed technology has been subsidized so forcibly.

900K for this?
http://www.solar.ltu.edu/2_design.php


Here's the UPI story.

" TROY, Mich., May 15 (UPI) -- A $900,000 solar-powered house
designed for the city of Troy, Mich. has never opened because of
water damage caused by frozen pipes, an official said,
Director Carol Anderson of Troy's Parks and Recreation
Department said tours of the house can't begin until the damaged
floors have been repaired The Detroit News reported Friday.
"It's not safe right now, and there's no estimated opening
time because it depends on when we can get funding," Anderson said.
The 800-square foot house was built by students from
Lawrence Technological University. It had no gas or electrical
hookups and was supposed to be livable year-round.
"The system was designed to kick a heater on to keep water
from freezing," said Jeff Biegler, parks superintendent. "The heater
drew all reserve power out of the battery, causing the system to
back down."
Joe Veryser of the university said he heard that somebody
turned the system off and forgot to turn it back on. "

[trularin]

GM was doomed a long time ago.

They are top heavy
They have been carrying the 50 billion plus retired account around like a ball and chain for years
They still, to this day, operate off the "good ole boy" method
They upper management never seems to address long term issues

And the list just keeps getting longer and longer.

It is amazing what a number of years of reckless abandonment can do.

[Bobcat]

Did I read the UPI story correctly ? A 800 square foot house for $900,000 ???
Must be true if the govt. is involved .... and maybe a preview of what a new car will cost after all the govt. meddling/engineering ???

[427sharpe]

Hmmm, have the 'nihilists' turned their back on America, or has America turned her back on those that believe strongly in the principles she was founded on? Namely, hard work and self sufficiency. Everybody get together and drink the Obama-aide while we slide down the slope into irrelevance.

[1ntCobra]

Originally Posted by Bobcat

Did I read the UPI story correctly ? A 800 square foot house for $900,000 ???
Must be true if the govt. is involved .... and maybe a preview of what a new car will cost after all the govt. meddling/engineering ???

I think there is a bit of difference between someone building a house with known off the shelf proven technologies and researchers engineering something completely new. If this was truly engineering new technologies, it would have cost 10's of millions of dollars or more. I suspect this is student project involved dozens of researchers working together with both proven and prototype technologies to build a one off deliverable. I'm sure if someone actually built a whole development of these houses the cost would be reasonable, but still higher than a normal home.

[1ntCobra]

Hmm, just taking a quick look at the website, this seems like a student project for a competition that was given to the department of parks and recreation after the competition was done? Perhaps nobody was really interested in it after the competition. You would think there would be some sort of university interest in monitoring the thing for energy efficiency. Don't you think if they had someone go out and visit the house on a daily basis that burst pipes would be noticed before the floor collapse?

Well the pipes can burst in a normal house in the winter when a heater fails. A normal house can burn down, be destroyed by a tornado or be vandalized too. Why do they need funding to fix this? Did somebody forget to purchase insurance on the building?

[Roscoe]

Computerworks:

Should I be taking umbrage?

Advise,
Roscoe

[J. T. Toad]

Originally Posted by Roscoe

Computerworks:

Should I be taking umbrage?

Advise,
Roscoe

www.umbrage.org

I would have liked to have never known societies ideological adoption of "umbrage" for policy implementation.

[Roscoe]

LOL....Taking umbrage just got easier....
Roscoe