NEWARK — If your idea of clean energy is a solar panel on a rooftop, think again. Sustainable homebuilding is getting a whole lot smarter, and NJIT and Rutgers University students are pushing the boundaries of the field.

"Team NJ" — as the group of architecture, planning and engineering students from the two universities is called — has built a futuristic-looking, one-story house that challenges traditional building techniques and sets a model for innovative, green housing.

The house is the two schools’ submission to the 2011 Solar Decathlon, a solar-housing competition the U.S. Department of Energy sponsors every two years. Launched in 2002, the initiative aims to push the creativity of 20 U.S. and foreign collegiate teams, rewarding designs that combine affordability and optimal energy production.

"People think that you can slap a few panels on a roof and you are doing the right thing," said Urs Gauchat, dean of the college of architecture and design at NJIT. "As academics, we want to bring more to the energy debate. We want to challenge preconceived notions of how to build in this country."

Team NJ’s house — envisioned as a Jersey Shore getaway for a couple — features a modular structure, precast concrete walls and an inverted roof to catch water and sunlight. Solar and thermal technology is integrated into every exposed surface of the house, which produces enough energy to power all of its appliances and keep the place cool during summers and warm during winters.

The 940-square-foot, one-bedroom house, built on an NJIT parking lot in Newark, will be presented to the public Tuesday in a topping off ceremony. It will then be disassembled and transported to Washington, D.C.

Students will have less than two days to put it together again on the National Mall, where all submissions to the competition will be on display between Sept. 23 and Oct. 2. More than 300,000 people visited the 2009 Solar Decathlon houses.

This is the first time a New Jersey team has participated in the competition, Team NJ said. Hoboken’s Stevens Institute of Technology will also compete — in partnership with New York’s Parsons the New School for Design. That group’s "Empowerhouse" will be donated to a Washington, D.C., family after the competition.

The final destination for Team NJ’s house is yet to be decided. But the house will likely remain on display, possibly in Atlantic City, students say.

The graduate and undergraduate students worked on the home’s design for more than a year. They hope to win the competition but also want to change the culture around housing construction, which they say is still stuck on wood frames and traditional technologies that are only cheaper in the short run.

Zachary Hvizdak, 22, of Waterford, an architecture student at NJIT, was at the solar house construction site earlier this month.

"We’re trying to think of new ways to build houses in the U.S.," he said, before a last-minute run to the Home Depot for some bolt shopping.

Other students stressed the long-term savings that energy-efficient houses can provide.

"Solar really is an amazing option," said Jen Switala. "Think about it: no utility bill, no gas, no electrical. We want all of New Jersey to be able to build this way."

Affordability was a priority for this year’s competition. The Department of Energy set the target cost of each house at $250,000 after a German team won the last competition by covering its house in solar panels — a costly offering. Team NJ’s prototype is all about the precast panels, which have plumbing and electrical work prefabricated into concrete walls. The panels can be assembled in a variety of ways, making each house unique, project supervisors said.

"You can mass-produce parts but every building doesn’t look the same," said Clinton Andrews, an urban planning professor and director of the Rutgers Center for Green Building who supervised the project. "That’s the real advantage of precast, we could get these houses down to being very affordable."

Richard Garber, an NJIT architecture professor who also supervised the project, recently built a concrete, green house in Jersey City. He envisions using an iPad as a centralized control panel for the home’s amenities.

"This is what future living looks like," Garber said. "Solar energy is not a stand-alone thing. It is more sustainable when integrated with architecture."

Several New Jersey businesses contributed to the project by donating materials and labor — including $125,000 worth of shipping offered by Supor and Sons, the trucking company that also transported the "Miracle on the Hudson" plane to North Carolina. Skanska USA Building, a nationwide construction company with a site in Parsippany, provided guidance with logistics and workers to help with the house assembling — all at no cost.

"It’s a honor for us to help these students," Mike Kalafut, the company’s vice president, said recently while at the site to help install one of the house’s walls.

Team NJ students said the final product was worth the vacations, weekends and nights spent on the project.

"How many hours are there in a week? Subtract maybe five. The rest of the time we were working on this," said Ian Siegel, 22, a NJIT architecture student from South Brunswick. "But it’s been amazing seeing how to actually get a building up in the real world, rather than studying it in theory."

See Team NJ's progress on its Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/ENJOYNewJersey.