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Photo of five men wearing safety vests and hard hats on a construction site.

University of Minnesota team members prepare for the construction of their ICON Solar House.

U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon 2011

The next Solar Decathlon will be held in Washington, D.C., in the fall of 2011, when once again teams from colleges and universities from around the world will gather to compete. The request for proposals (RFP), RFP amendments, and draft rules for the 2011 competition are available below. The following documents are available as Adobe Acrobat PDFs. Download Adobe Reader.

Please note the following important dates for the Solar Decathlon 2011 RFP:

Amendment 1 posted: Nov. 3, 2009
Proposals due: Nov. 17, 2009
Notification of competitive-range proposals: Jan. 13, 2010
Amendment 2 posted: Jan. 21, 2010
Amendment 3 posted: Jan. 27, 2010
Conceptual designs due: March 16, 2010.

Teams selected for the Solar Decathlon 2011 competition will be announced in April 2010.

Colleges, universities, and other post-secondary educational institutions worldwide are welcome to submit proposals, which determine entry into the biennial Solar Decathlon design competition. All proposals are reviewed, scored, and ranked. Subject to the quantity and quality of proposals, a limited number of teams will be selected for entry.

Institutions considering the submission of a proposal are encouraged to familiarize themselves with the 2009 rules. Please note that changes to the rules are typical from one competition to the next. In addition, core team members from prospective schools are encouraged to attend some or all of the 2009 competition to observe the teams in action and learn valuable lessons that can be applied to their own projects.

Please submit questions regarding the RFP process to Jeffrey.Soltesz@nrel.gov.