A Thai student team from King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi (KMUTT) won 4 awards, the first prize from People’s Choice Award and the other three prizes from designing and building an energy saving house in the international competition, the Solar Decathlon Europe 2019 (SDE 2019) in Hungary. There were teams from many countries e.g. Romania, Hungary, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, and Algeria joining this competition and. KMUTT Team was the only team from Asia to qualify for the final.
Kasan Chanto, the KMUTT PhD student and the team leader, explained that ‘The Resilient Nest’ won 4 awards including the winner of People’s Choice Awards (Popular Vote), the 1st Runner–up for Comfort Conditions, the 2nd Runner–up for Neighbourhood Integration and Impact and the 2nd Runner–up for Innovation and Viability.
THE RESILIENT NEST or Ban Rang Nok is the work of the KMUTT students from various departments who have spent more than 20 months working together to design it. The concept comes from how birds build their nests from easy-to-find natural materials. The nest is light and can be built quickly and easily. The house is composed of modular units where the rooms can be changed to fit the direction of light and climate of the country. These modular units can also be changed to suit the needs of dwellers. The wall has heat insulation to help maintain the temperature inside the house. The rainscreen wall outside the house helps with ventilation and energy reduction used for adjusting temperature in the house.
To boost the circular economy concept, the team used rubberwood which is grown locally to build the house; this adds value to the rubberwood and helps to increase the demand for rubberwood in the country. The wood was dried at a high temperature to make it durable against termites and other insects. Glue-terminated timber method was used to produce the size of wood suitable to build the house structure and to reduce wood expansion or shrinkage.
Most importantly, the house was designed to have natural ventilation in order to decrease energy consumption. Solar collectors and solar cells were installed on the roof to produce sufficient electricity from solar energy for consumption in the house and sharing with neighbours.
Our main sponsors for this competition are PTT, EGAT and other partners of KMUTT.