The Westcott House in Springfield hosted a ribbon cutting Thursday for its newest attraction. The Solar House will be unveiled directly behind the Frank Lloyd Wright designed home on High Street.
The Solar House was created by students at Vermont’s Norwich University for a solar design competition in in California last year and will be used for educational purposes.
"This space allows us to offer classes and different workshops to teach people about sustainable architecture," says Marta Wojcik, executive director and curator of the Westcott House.
Cara Armstrong, Director of Architecture and Art at Norwich University, says student designers had the goal of designing a solar home to make heating bills affordable for low-income families and Vermont residents who have to endure a long winter. They named their design the Delta T-90.
"Delta means change, T stands for temperature and 90 is the 90 degree temperature differential," Armstrong said. "So when it's 20 below zero Fahrenheit outside, the inside of the house will still be a warm and comfortable 70 degrees powered by just solar energy."
Wittenberg University physics professor Dan Fleisch believes the Delta T-90 will be an excellent tool to teach the community about solar energy.
"The sun puts out 400 million, billion, billion watts, even a very, very tiny fraction of that is still a tremendous amount of energy, and that's one of the energy sources for this house," Fleisch said.
Cara Armstrong will serve as an artist in residence this month at the Solar House. The grand opening for the house is this Saturday.