Community Partners

Queen’s Solar Design Team

The Queen’s Solar Design Team is a multidisciplinary team of engineering, commerce, and architecture students seeking to build a net zero home that capitalizes on research and innovation while inspiring and educating the public to demand more from the next generation of homes. Our long-term goal is to compete in the U.S. Department of Energy’s Solar Decathlon in Washington, D.C., where universities from around the world compete to build the most energy-efficient home, while educating the public on sustainable living. We have made it our mission to tackle one of the most critical issues facing our generation: how to achieve truly sustainable and affordable living. Through a collaborative effort between our team, Queen’s faculty, the local community, and our sponsors, we are determined to make net zero homes a scalable reality throughout Canada and all over the world.

Community Actions

Action	Target	Status	Themes
Queen’s Solar Journey The Solar Journey is our overarching name for our team’s educational initiatives. Throughout the year we have been attending tradeshows and conferences to promote green building. We built a “Corner Model of Sustainability,” which is a model of a corner of a home, which showcases radiant floor heating, recycled paint, an Energy Star window, and bamboo flooring. We use this Corner to educate the public, as we travel to different events throughout Southern Ontario (Kingston, Toronto, Ottawa, etc.). As part of this initiative, we also wish to educate high school and elementary school students through educational activities and learning sessions.	Our goal is to travel to at least 6 events each year (tradeshows, conferences and community events) as well as hold at least 4 events targeted specifically towards students (elementary, high school, and Queen’s students).	Ongoing	Primary theme: SO1 All themes by pillar Social: SO1
Queen’s Solar Demonstration Home The Queen’s Solar Demonstration Home is a prefabricated home that will be outfitted with sustainable technologies, including solar energy. The home will firstly act as a research tool for engineering students at Queen’s. Beyond its research purposes, the Demonstration Home will also act as an education tool for the community at large. We hope to use the home to inspire the Kingston community to demand more from their homes. Within the home, we will be featuring energy-efficient products and technologies from local retailers in the hopes that Kingston homeowners will retrofit their homes and strive to live more sustainably. Furthermore, we plan to hold educational tours to local high schools and elementary schools.	We hope to have 10% of the Queen’s population (including administration and faculty) visit the home. We will also have visitors fill out scorecards to measure their experience within the home, specifically evaluating how enjoyable and educational they found the home and materials to be. Ideally, we aim to have a response of 75% top-box satisfaction (i.e. a rating of 4 or 5 out of 5). We also hope to have at least 5 local school visits.	Ongoing	Primary theme: EN1 All themes by pillar Environmental: EN1 Social: SO1 SO2