University of Maryland Virtual Solar Home

As part of the US Department of Energy 2017 Solar Decathlon competition, the University of Maryland engineering team has developed a detailed, physically based model that predicts the performance of our house design based on weather forecasts corresponding to the locations of our virtual houses. This open-source model, written entirely in the Python programming language, includes first-principles descriptions of solar irradiance, house PV array power output, nominal house energy-related loads, and thermal modeling of the house and its HVAC system.

What is this?

This page summarizes the four sustainability measure predications for today based on the local weather forecasts and the results of our simulator predictions made for each of the four houses shortly after midnight (local time).

Click on each sustainability icon for details on how those sustainability metrics are defined and computed;
Click on the sustainability index itself for any of the four virtual reACTs for more information on the simulation results for today used to quantify each metric.

And be sure to follow the virtual reACT community at reactvirtual.eng.umd.edu:

For more information contact www.thinfilm.umd.edu