The Bright Built Barn recently won the prestigious 2009 LEED for Homes Innovative Project Award from the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC).

The award recognizes projects, developers and home builders who have demonstrated leadership in the residential building marketplace.

Phil Kaplan from Kaplan Thompson Architects and Tedd Benson from Bensonwood went to Phoenix, Arizona to accept the award at GreenBuild, the USGBC Annual Conference, this past December.

A write-up of the event is available on the Bright Built Barn blog.

We also received this report of performance of Bright Built Barn‘s solar systems, one year later:

I’m happy to report that [BrightBuilt Barn] has exceeded all expectations.

On a subjective level, it has been a joy to live and work in – warm in the winter, cool in the summer, light and airy and lovely to look at all year round. I am also delighted to report that I have not had one minute of trouble with any of the systems – high praise indeed from a guy who hates maintenance and repair, and who has had his share of woes while living in a number of conventionally built houses over the years. The solar systems in the Barn are simple, with few moving parts, and highly reliable – so far, they just work.

ReVision installed the solar hot water and solar power systems in this innovative, net-zero building.

In its first year, the home’s PV system generation a surplus of 5094 kilowatt-hours – or enough energy to power 5 conventional homes for a month.

Building owner Keith Collins goes on to say that “The Barn does, in fact, power my conventionally built main house (over 15 years old and no paragon of energy efficiency) which sits about 100 feet away, and has produced over 60% of that home’s electrical use.”

You can see real-time system performance of the Bright Built Barn online at brightbuiltbarn.com.