The Solar Decathlon And Abet Ec 2000

In October 2002 the University of Virginia (UVA) Solar House team placed second in the inaugural Solar Decathlon, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE), culminating a two year effort in which over 100 engineering and architecture students designed and built a solar-powered house. The sunshine falling on the house supplies all the energy needs of a normal family, as the design incorporates photovoltaic generation of electricity and solar water heating for domestic hot water and space heating using a radiant floor. There is also a stone-lined sunroom for collecting and storing solar energy, and adjustable louvers over the extensive southfacing glazing to regulate incoming solar radiation. Data logging, control and user interface are integrated by a LabVIEW-based automation system. The house continues to serve as a laboratory for multidisciplinary capstone design team projects. The project, which allows students to learn energy concepts in an integrated realistic setting, provides numerous benefits for engineering students that are often lacking in standard engineering instruction, and that are being emphasized by the new ABET EC 2000 criteria. It introduces them to holistic systems thinking—that the system is not necessarily optimized by optimizing the subsystems individually. It connects with the real world experiences of students. It provides an ideal vehicle for “incorporating engineering standards and realistic constraints that include most of the following considerations: economic; environmental; sustainability; manufacturability; ethical; health and safety; social; and political”. [ABET EC2000, criterion 4] It demands initiative and provides leadership opportunities in project management, cost estimation and budgeting, marketing and fund-raising. It develops manual skills, communication skills, and teamwork skills. It values and develops aesthetic judgment and creativity. This paper will describe the Solar Decathlon, the UVA house design, the educational value of the project, and how it contributes to the goals of ABET EC 2000. Introduction: ABET EC 2000 The Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) has issued a call for rethinking engineering education with its Engineering Criteria (EC) 2000. No longer is it sufficient for programs to demonstrate that they provide students with the appropriate inputs: a specified minimum number of credits in fundamental math and science, engineering science, engineering design, and humanities and social science. Now programs must demonstrate the attainment of specified outputs: capabilities achieved by students in eleven different skill areas specified by ABET, as well as additional areas selected by the programs themselves. The eleven skills specified by ABET in criterion three, together with the design requirement of criterion four, emphasize the interdisciplinary nature of 21 st century engineering. Not only must engineering graduates engineers be able to demonstrate competence in traditional engineering-related tasks: a) apply knowledge of mathematics, science and engineering, b) P ge 9.291.1 design and conduct experiments as well as analyze and interpret data, c) design a system, component or process to meet desired needs, d) identify, formulate, and solve engineering problems, and k) use the techniques, skills and modern engineering tools necessary for engineering practice. Engineering graduates must also d) be able to function on multidisciplinary teams, f) understand "professional and ethical responsibility", g) "communicate effectively", i) "engage in life-long learning", j) have "a knowledge of contemporary issues", and h) have "the broad education necessary to understand the impact of engineering solutions in a global and societal context." The professional component of criterion 4 moreover, requires that "Students must be prepared for the engineering practice through the curriculum culminating in a major design experience based on the knowledge and skills acquired in earlier coursework and incorporating engineering standards and realistic constraints that include most of the following considerations: economic; environmental; sustainability; manufacturability; ethical; health and safety; social; and political." Opportunities and Challenges for ECC Instruction Few areas of engineering offer such great opportunities to embrace the new EC 2000 approach as Energy Conversion and Conservation (ECC). The subject is inherently interdisciplinary, engaging electrical, mechanical, chemical, and nuclear engineers. It is rife with contemporary issues involving the environment, the economy, and sustainability, thereby confronting students and practitioners with ethical, social, health and safety, and political questions, and " the impact of engineering solutions in a global and societal context." The development of EC 2000 comes at a time when ECC education is in serious need of reinvigoration. In both electrical and mechanical engineering, energy is increasingly regarded as a "mature discipline", which fails to attract and inspire the brightest young minds entering the engineering profession. It hardly matters that deregulation of the electricity industry and our nation's increasing reliance on imported petroleum have created ever more pressing challenges for energy engineers, or that breakthroughs in computers, semiconductors, and chemical separation technologies have created heretofore unattainable options for the creation, delivery and utilization of power. As is so often the case, perception trumps reality, and energy engineering remains in the backwater of most schools engineering curricula. The thesis of this paper is that EC 2000 can reinvigorate ECC education, but only if energy engineers broaden their perspectives, loosen their disciplinary allegiances, and embrace the opportunities presented by this new paradigm. This will not be easy in an academic environment in which students' curricular requirements are largely determined by fossilized faculty groupings built around archaic "disciplines". Electric power engineers view the mechanical precursors and consequences of the phenomena they study as "prime movers" or "loads" that exist in some mystery sphere that hardly warrant further investigation. Much less do any energy courses, whether electrical, mechanical, or chemical, venture into the alien worlds of economics, government, or ethics which provide the motivating forces behind much of their work.