Beausoleil Solar Home

[NewsCopy]

  UL - More than a house will be on display on the National Mall in October when University of Louisiana students compete in an international solar home design-build competition.

“This brings UL into the international limelight,” said Dustin Domangue, president of the UL Student Government Association.

The UL team is one of 20 collegiate design teams from across the world selected to compete in the Department of Energy’s biennial Solar Decathlon Oct. 9-18 on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

Domangue and other student leaders surprised the team with a check for $50,000 Tuesday.

The team travels to Washington with its house in tow, Sept. 25. Tuesday’s donation will help with the team’s travel expenses, said Gretchen Lacombe-Vanicor, project manager.

“This money is going to put us ahead of schedule for the fundraising,” Vanicor said. “It’s an incredible sign of how much the university appreciates what we’re doing. We’ve said from the beginning this project represents our university, our culture and our state.”

The team’s fundraising has been a grassroots effort with donations ranging from $4 on up, said Catherine Guidry, team public relations manager.

“It’s such a relief and weight off our shoulders,” Guidry said as she thanked the student leaders for the donation.

The donation puts the fundraising effort ahead of schedule, but about $50,000 more is still needed, said Geoff Gjertson, UL associate professor of architecture and faculty team coordinator.

The rest of the story

By MARSHA SILLS
Advocate Acadiana bureau

[cjr3888]

I have a great piece of property that they can put this house after they win the competition.


igeaux.mobi

[NewsCopy]

By now, most of you have heard about UL's Beau Soleil solar home team. We've got some information in case you're wondering how you can help out.

Ul's team Beau Soleil is nearing completion on their solar home for the Solar Decathlon coming up in Washington D.C. but they still need some help getting there.

"To adopt a student, community

KATC

[billbeck451]

Good luck in solar decathalon in DC. Once again UL leads the way in Louisiana leaving others in their dust. Robotics competions and now solar, what honors will be next.


Of course you never see any of these brought up by our "big brother" who is "first" in the state in everything to the East

[Cajunbander]

Funny thing about LA politics.

A friend of mine is in engineering at UL. He was telling me that LSU's engineering program gets four times the state funding that UL's does. However, UL gets ELEVEN TIMES more funding from the federal government. The federal government knows what's up.

He was telling me both UL and LSU have launched 3 weather balloons in the past few years. LSU had a 0% success rate and a 0% recovery rate - meaning they didn't receive any of the data they expected to receive from their balloons, nor could they find them. UL had an 80% success rate and a 100% recovery rate. They got 80% of the data they were expecting back, and they located all three of them (pin-pointing them to within 500ft. I believe he said.)

He told me that he had done the calculations on one of them, and predicted it to fall in some river, so he went out and waited for it. Meanwhile, some LSU faculty invited themselves to help them. The LSU professor told him he was wrong, and the balloon was going to land approx. 15 miles away. My friend told he that he'll wait there, and the LSU prof could go out and look for it where he wanted, and if he was right, the LSU prof could be the hero. Guess where it landed. Right where my friend said it would.

The next day, in LSU's student newspaper, there was an article that read "LSU Professors Assist UL Students in Recovering Weather Balloons" (which, they didn't end up doing at all).
His professor wrote a letter to their editor, and the editor ran an apology to UL the next day.

[NewsCopy]

[NewsCopy]

WE PASSED, WE PASSED, WE PASSED!!!

 WOW!!! What an amazing day for TEAM BeauSoleil! WE pulled it all together and passed all of our inspections with only minutes to spare. This is a brief timeline:

6:00 PM - We were still having trouble with our breakers. I even called home and asked my family to start praying for us because the thought of not being able to start the competition was heartbreaking.

6:30 PM - We all stayed calm and came up with the solution. A local electrical supply store even stayed open late so one of our faculty advisors could buy some more breakers.

7:00 PM - The breakers arrive and we change them.

7:15 PM - Mr. Conway comes back and the new breakers work. Unfortunately the outlets were wrong so we still could not pass.

7:15 PM - 7:20 PM - WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO!?

7:20 PM - 7:30 PM - We run up and down the mall asking other teams if they could loan some outlets to us.

7:30 PM - 7:45 PM -We changed all the outlets and PASSED our final electrical inspection.

7:55 PM - Call for final inspection and PASS!!!!!!!!!!

Tonight, I witnessed the most incredible teamwork I have EVER seen. It was absolutely inspiring. WE worked together, kept our cool, and solved the problem. This is part of what makes our TEAM so special. We ALL truly believe in what we are doing and are very proud to represent our university, our culture and our state.

I would like to thank Mrs. T, Mrs. Billie, Father Chester and everyone back home who were praying for us (I really think this helped us through) and our incredible faculty members for helping us solve this problem. Also, we owe a huge amount of gratitude to the other Solar Decathlon teams (TEAM Missouri, The University of Arizona, The Ohio State University, University of Kentucky, and Universidad de Puerto Rico) who were so kind to help us out. We truly could not have done it without you!

So,it is here! We have finally made it. It is truly an amazing feeling to be here with my TEAM. We were definitely blessed tonight.

from facebook

[CockyCajun]

Vote for the BeauSoleil Louisiana Solar Home by sending a text to 99503 with the message HOUSE76 no spaces

[KACajun]

FYI: The BeauSoleil house is currently in 5th place.

[Villager]

http://www.solardecathlon.org/

Link to the US Department of Energy website for this event.

[CajunDreDog]

WAFB in BR did a piece on this group last night on the 10 PM news. It was nice to see in BR, although we did get a U.L.L. or two out of it. They mostly called us UL Lafayette though. Still nice to see.
igeaux.mobi

[rhineaux]

_ FYI: The BeauSoleil house is currently in 5th place. _

Does anyone know the significance of the Text Message voting? I didn't see where that factored into their current 5th place score, not that it should. But I also didn't notice on the website where it talked about text votes.