If you are in Washington DC this weekend, and the coming week, it looks like it would be interesting to visit the “Solar Decathlon” on the Capital Mall. Sponsored by BP, this is an opportunity to demonstrate and test various designs for solar in the home. Twenty university teams (MIT, Carnegie Mellon, Cornell, U.C. Santa Barbara and many more including international representation from Canada, Spain, Germany) are involved, selected by the Department of Energy. They are constructing homes on the mall, and then will be comparing their performance using a variety of measures in ten different contests. Construction began on Friday October 12, and the event continues through October 20, 2007. There will come a time when solar is a major part of the energy picture, and this is a nice chance to see it coming.