Records of the Solar Energy Applications Laboratory and Solar Village

The Solar Energy Applications Laboratory (SEAL) was established at the Foothills Campus in 1972 by George Lof, a chemical engineer and professor of civil engineering at Colorado State University. The Solar Village was the research facility for SEAL. Funded by an NSF grant, a five-building complex was constructed to test both heating and cooling systems to determine how practical solar energy would be in a residence. Each building used a different type of solar heat collection system, including a drain-down liquid system, an air system, and a closed loop antifreeze system. Data-logging equipment was installed in each building, providing continuous data to SEAL researchers.

SEAL became a major systems development center for solar heating and cooling of buildings. When the lab's first structure, Solar House I, was built in 1974, it was the first house in the United States engineered to be both heated and cooled with solar energy. The primary emphasis of research conducted at Solar Village was on improving the performance of systems installed in a real-world environment so that they can reach their theoretical potential. Under Dr. Lof's leadership, faculty and students from civil, mechanical, and chemical engineering received support from the U.S. Department of Energy for studies on room air motion, building and HVAC simulation, short-term energy monitoring, thermal storage, and neural networks for HVAC control.

In the late 1980s, federal funding for alternative energy research began to decrease significantly, as the energy crisis of the 1970s ended and petroleum was again cheap and readily available. Government funding to continue research at SEAL became scarce and the program began to shrink accordingly; by the late 1990s most research funds were exhausted. The buildings that made up Solar Village were used by CSU until they were deemed by facilities management to be too expensive to continue operation. All but one of the buildings were razed between 2006 to 2007.