Related Links on Solar Buildings

Investigate several books, publications, and Web sites to get an overview of the use of solar technologies in buildings. The Solar Decathlon site will also allow you to view the plans for the upcoming solar-buildings competition to be held in October 2007.

Some of the following documents are available as Adobe Acrobat PDFs. Download Adobe Reader.

A Golden Thread: 2500 Years of Solar Architecture and Technology

A book by Ken Butti and John Perlin, Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1980

High-Performance Home Technologies: Solar Thermal & Photovoltaic Systems

This document is the sixth volume of the Building America Best Practices Series. Nine chapters provide an introduction to current photovoltaic and solar thermal building practices. Also included are 13 case studies that review building projects of all scales from around the United States. (PDF 9.5 MB)

How to Build a Better Home

Learn to use solar energy and the whole-building approach to reduce your environmental impact, live comfortably, and save money (PDF 567 KB).

Oak Ridge National Laboratory: Solar Hybrid Lighting Partnership

This Oak Ridge project is helping to develop the hybrid solar lighting technology, where sunlight collected in a mirrored dish system is used to illuminate the interior of a building via fiber optics and special lighting fixtures.

The New Solar Electric Home: The Photovoltaics How-To Handbook, 3rd edition

A book by Joel Davidson, Stonefield Publishing, 2005

The Solar Electric House: Energy for the Environmentally Responsive, Energy-Independent Home, 3rd edition

A book by Steven J. Strong, Sustainability Press, 1994

U.S. DOE 2007 Solar Decathlon Official Web site

The 2007 Solar Decathlon is a competition to be held in the fall of 2007 on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Twenty teams of college and university students will compete to design, build, and operate the most attractive, effective, and energy-efficient solar-powered house. Check this Web site for more details.