New Zealand Wins Engineering Contest At Solar Decathlon

We congratulate the Faculty of Architecture and Design for their third place success in the Solar Decathlon competition and are glad that we could contribute to their triumph in the Engineering category.

"Compliments to Abby for her successful input to the VUW First Light team" Prof John Hine, Dean, Faculty of Engineering

Engineering from Victoria University of Wellington was judged top in the US Department of Energy Solar Decathlon competition.

The Solar Decathlon event is a showcase of the best practical sustainable living environments. 10 events ranging from Architecture to Engineering and even mod-con Appliances are used to measure the state-of-the-art from universities across the globe. In the Engineering category, the team from VUW was ranked first out of the 20 competitors! An impressive achievement considering VUW was the first team ever from the Southern Hemisphere.

"The New Zealand house was beautifully executed, with extreme attention to detail and craftsmanship and an intuitive tree-ring visualization system, which makes it easy to understand energy use throughout the house", said Engineering Contest juror Dr. Hunter Fanney, chief of the building energy and environment division of the engineering laboratory at the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

Abigail Arulandu graduated from our Bachelors of Engineering in Electronics and Computer Science (ECEN) last year and is now continuing her passion for human assistive technology with a Masters project at VUW Engineering. Over the summer, and beyond, she played an integral role in the engineering of the First Light house. "In this fast paced project the creative and problem solving skills learned in my engineering degree were vital. Also the ability to pick up new concepts quickly, such as programming in Ruby on Rails, and communicate with the diverse contributors to the house were transferable skills gained in the degree" says a very positive Abby regarding her time with the project.

Potential students interested in gaining the latest digital engineering skills that can be applied from leading sustainable technology to assistive robotics, then please see our information pages.

See Solar Decathlon, Tring and First Light House for more information