PROVIDENCE -- The real-estate ad for the house might read like this:

New construction, unique design, no heating or electric bills -- ever.

Slide show

Len Looman, left, a consulting engineer, assists Matt Willse, an urban design major Brown University, right, and Jonathan Strnad, a second-year graduate student at the Rhode Island School of Design, rear, in installing solar panels on a house being built on South Water Street in Providence.

Multimedia: Listen to a multimedia report by Tim Barmann with photos by Gretchen Ertl

The unusual, wood-framed one-bedroom home has been under construction all summer on the Providence River waterfront by students from the Rhode Island School of Design.

RISD is 1 of 18 schools across the nation participating in a contest to build a small, yet functional house that operates entirely on energy from the sun.

The Solar Decathalon is being sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.

Also participating is the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth.

Judging will take place in Washington, D.C. next month.

The event is intended to demonstrate the advantages of living off the energy produced by the sun.

"The students will show us how we can live with abundance and comfort in beautiful, energy-efficient, completely solar-powered homes," according to the contest Web site.

With energy prices at record highs, alternative energy sources, such as solar power, have become increasingly popular and practical.

The growth in sales of solar cells between 2003 and last year increased by 57 percent, according to Stanley R. Bull, associate director for science and technology for the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. The NREL is a unit of the U.S. Department of Energy.

"Part of it is driven by the recognition that we need to be finding alternative sources of energy," Bull said in an interview. "We need to be finding cleaner energy."

RISD students have been working on their solar house for two years, said Wil Yoder, a professor of architecture and the faculty adviser to the project.

For the contest, the house has to be a functional home with all the standard amenities such as a stove and refrigerator-freezer, an air conditioning and heating system, a shower and toilet, a bedroom and desk space. Everything has to operate on sun power.

Students in design-studio classes each came up with their own concepts, and students in subsequent classes picked a winner and ironed out all the details. About 90 students in all participated, Yoder said, including about four from Brown University.

This spring, they started construction on an 800-square-foot one-bedroom structure that's unlike any house seen before.

It has a rectangular, boxy frame with a roof that rises at a slight incline on one end. On the other end is a roof garden, where grasses will grow in aluminum bins. The outside walls are to be covered by perforated aluminum louvers that will move with the sun, absorbing or reflecting heat, depending on the season. They look like a giant vertical blinds.

Inside, the walls and ceilings are covered with birch-veneered plywood panels. The kitchen area and bathroom are located in the center. The bedroom has a bed that folds up against the wall when not in use. And against the opposite wall is an "appliance garage" -- an entertainment center-like piece of furniture that doubles as a computer desk and storage space for the batteries and solar-power equipment.

The living space on the opposite end has an open feel. The back end of the house is a wall of glass doors that face south to get maximum exposure to the sun.

The heating and cooling system was designed for the project by Arden Engineering of Pawtucket. It uses copper tubes, solar panels and "thermal change" bricks that store heat during the day and release it when the temperature falls in the evening. The same system will be able to cool the house as well.

One of the biggest challenges the students faced was to construct a house that could be deconstructed. That is, the students will have to disassemble the house, load it onto several moving vans and flatbed trucks, ship it to Washington D.C., and reassemble it on the National Mall, near the U.S. Capitol.

The teams will have only four days to put the houses back together again, alongside each other, in a kind of "solar village."

"That keeps me up at night," said Ryan Hammerschmidt, 30, who graduated from RISD this spring with a master's degree in architecture. He stayed on to help construct the appliance garage, he said.

Hammerschmidt said the inside will be furnished with artwork and furniture designed by RISD students and alumni.

The RISD students hope that the attention paid to design details will give them an edge up on other schools, Hammerschmidt said. RISD is the only art school in a contest made up mainly of engineering schools.

For Yoder and Jonathan Knowles, the two faculty advisers, the biggest hurdle was raising money and convincing builders, suppliers, movers and others to donate materials or labor.

The total cost to build the house if the team had to pay for everything would be about $350,000. A telephone drive and other fundraising activities netted about $40,000 in cash, Yoder said. A $30,000 grant from the Rhode Island Renewable Energy Fund paid for the solar panels, Hammerschmidt said. The rest was picked up by various companies, such as Paul Arpin Van Lines, which agreed to ship the house to Washington and back again.

The competition itself involves proving to judges that the house is functional. The students will have to cook meals, wash and dry clothes, use a television and a computer, run the dishwasher, and heat 15 gallons of water for 10 minutes at 110 degrees, twice a day. They'll also need to power an electric car, provided by the Department of Energy, with extra electricity produced by the house.

Yoder said the students have fallen a little behind schedule, but he said the house will be done in time for a Sept. 23 ribbon-cutting ceremony in Providence.

The house will probably be taken apart the next day for shipment to Washington, he said.

The teams' houses will be on display at the National Mall Oct. 7 to 16 and will be open for touring every day except Oct. 12, when they will close for competition. An overall winner will be announced on Oct. 15.

UMass Dartmouth's solar house was open to the public yesterday at the Dartmouth campus.

RISD's house will be moved back to the campus after the competition and stay for at least two years. It may be used to house visiting lecturers, Yoder said.

Will it ever be sold?

Maybe. There has already been interest. "We've had a number of calls," he said.

Yoder said his biggest satisfaction is seeing sustainable-energy concepts become incorporated in RISD's education program. They will be stressed through the design of all kinds of buildings, including schools and office buildings, he said.

If we can build self-sustaining houses, said Yoder, "we can thumb our nose at the oil companies."

Timothy C. Barmann covers energy issues, utilities and technology. He can be reached at tbarmann [at] projo.com