The U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon is an award-winning program that challenges collegiate students from around the world to design, build and operate solar-powered houses that are affordable, highly energy-efficient, attractive, and easy to live in.”

The 2015 event, held in Irvine, California, was a showcase of engineering, architectural and energy efficiency innovation. And the team of students from Hoboken, New Jersey Stevens Institute of Technology walked away with the “top” prize for their project, SURE HOUSE, built in response to the devastation caused by Hurricane Sandy, the October 2012 Super Storm that pummeled the East Coast.

“SURE HOUSE started with a simple question: how can we design a home which both reduces its energy use and adapts to the realities of a changing, more extreme climate?” The answer “emerged as a new direction in storm resilient coastal housing, incorporating state of the art building science, the latest renewable energy technologies, and fiber-composite materials repurposed from the boat building industry.”

Earning 950.685 points out of a possible 1000, SURE HOUSE is “a building armored against extreme weather that uses 90 percent less energy than its conventional cousins, powers itself through clean solar energy, and in the aftermath of a storm becomes a hub for emergency power to the neighborhood… all of this packaged as a comfortable, beautiful beach house.”

Visit https://surehouse.org/ to learn more.