Solar Decathlon 2009 winners were announced, with the University’s team taking second place, an improvement from 2007’s team, who came in seventh place.

The program challenges teams of college students to design, build and operate solar-powered houses, said Megan Smith, senior in Architecture and project team member. Students have the opportunity to come together every two years to participate in the decathlon.

The competition is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy partnered with its National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

This is the fourth time for the worldwide event and the second time the University has been involved.

“It was a great opportunity. I learned more doing the Solar Decathlon than I think I did in any of my other classes,” said Joe Simon, graduate student and 2009 project manager. “Just because it was the whole process of taking the idea from the concept all the way through to building it, and we had a lot of new ideas.”

According to the website, the Decathlon gets its name from the 10 specific areas of competition: architecture, market viability, engineering, lighting design, communications, comfort zone, hot water, appliances, home entertainment and net metering. The team that finishes the week of competition with the most points wins.

Students spend three weeks in Washington D.C. for the event.

“We like to think the house just simply worked the way it was supposed to,” Simon said. “On all the objective tests, we were able to work extremely well. For construction, we spent probably about eight months working, and, overall, we spent two years working on design to construction to transport it to Washington DC.”

The house’s major aim was to look at ways to conserve energy, which they did by including 12 inches of insulation in the walls.

The team was shadowed by Tim Hartin and Alison Wood of the Big Ten Network for a documentary, “Solar Prairie Home: The Illinois Decathlon,” which will air at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday.

“It was fun being shadowed for the documentary,” 2009 team member Camden Greenlee said. “It was a little weird repeating something three times in a row but Tim was very energetic and fun.”

The 2011 team has already began its work and hopes to live up to the project’s high expectations, Smith said.

Now, they are looking for more manpower. Though there are ten core members, they are looking for approximately 200.

The large number of participants is one of the benefits and troubles of the project, Greenlee said.

“It is fun getting everybody together from all the different departments on campus, but it is difficult for communication,” he said.