The second time was the charm for University of Maryland. The school took second place in Solar Decathlon 2007 and parlayed its experience into a very solid first-place finish in the 2011 edition, which wound down on Sunday in Washington, D.C.’s West Potomac Park after almost two weeks of site preparation and installation work, visitors, and evaluations in the competition’s 10 contest categories.

Yes, the 19 schools competing in Solar Decathlon 2011 endured more than their fair share of overcast skies and rain, but the solar houses still performed as designed and the students somehow sustained the high level of energy required to install and present their entries. By Saturday, October 1, however, with all of the contest jurying and measuring completed, Secretary of Energy Steven Chu announced that Maryland’s entry, a 920-sq.-ft. double-module home called WaterShed, had won the competition. Purdue University’s 984-sq.-ft. INhome, which features a traditional suburban look, took second, and Team New Zealand, representing Victoria University of Wellington, took third with its 813-sq.-ft. “Kiwi bach”-inspired First Light.

Scoring highlights

In fact, WaterShed had been dominating the No. 1 spot in the rankings all week, scoring 90 or more points out of 100 in eight of the Decathlon’s 10 competition categories: architecture (in which WaterShed scored 96.0 points), market appeal (94), engineering (89), communications (88), affordability (91.336), comfort zone (96.139), hot water (100), appliances (99.798), home entertainment (97.847), and energy balance (100).

The rankings for the market appeal contest (a juried category gauging marketability and livability) also were announced on Saturday, with the category winner, Middlebury College’s Self-Reliance house, earning 95 points.

Beyond the prestige of scoring high in a juried and measured contest, though, is being the visitor favorite, which the Decathlon, to its credit, recognizes with the Solar Decathlon 2011 People’s Choice Award, won by the team representing Appalachian State University and its Solar Homestead, a two-bedroom home of almost 1,000 sq. ft. that offers an architectural nod to the pioneer era in Appalachia. The house placed twelfth in the overall rankings, but, as a Decathlon contest official noted, the home’s modular design and overall comfort, and the team’s contagious enthusiasm attracted the winning share of the 92,538 popular votes cast.