After three years of planning, the Illinois Solar Decathlon has begun construction of its newest housing initiative, BEACON Home in Rantoul, Illinois.
An interdisciplinary, student-led RSO, ISD focuses on creating both innovative and cost-effective solutions for energy-efficient housing. This includes using solar panels and dynamic heating and cooling to optimize energy output and consumption. The RSO hopes its efforts will establish a framework for building more eco-friendly homes and, eventually, entire neighborhoods of affordable, sustainable housing.
This marks the second project ISD has undertaken in the Rantoul area. The first, a net-positive home called RENU-House, lies on the same street as BEACON Home.
Normally, ISD enters these projects into the BuildingsNEXT Student Design Competition. This opens them up to grants and sponsorships that help fund materials and construction and help them maintain credibility when contacting contractors. They last entered RENU-House for the competition in 2023.
Following the completion of RENU-House, the team began designing BEACON Home for the 2025-2026 competition cycle, but the competition was called off before they could finish. This closed doors to a lot of the financial and commercial support ISD normally relies on, but that didn’t stop them.
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“We didn’t want this to go down the drain,” said Eshana Jain, senior in Engineering and president of ISD. “It required a lot of convincing. We had to convince our faculty. We had to convince our contractors. We had to convince our students … that we would be able to accomplish this.”
Aside from the loss of competition funding, ISD also lost access to federal grant money following the Trump administration’s termination of the Solar for All program. The program allocated federal funds for converting communities to solar power in order to reduce energy costs.
Without those federal grants, contractors no longer had any obligation to help ISD develop its designs. Even then, ISD pushed forward.
“Look, we don’t really care about the federal incentives,” said Amrit Agarwal, junior in Engineering and construction management lead for the ISD build team. “It’s about what our purpose is as the Illinois Solar Decathlon, and we will accomplish it even without the federal incentives.”
Without financial backing, ISD sought out more cost-effective materials and hired smaller roofing and framing companies. They cut costs any way they could.
Many of the companies they hired had never worked with solar panels before, but ISD took the time to combine its organization’s knowledge of renewable energy systems with its contractors’ architectural know-how. Building that kind of connection and putting in that kind of effort didn’t scare them, and it proved that sustainable living could be affordable and accessible.
“Sustainable living and renewable energy are termed ‘luxuries’ because only the biggest of developers or the biggest of the companies have that margin to actually invest in that sector,” Agarwal said. “That’s where we’re bridging the gap.”
On top of all this, ISD’s entirely student-led approach also poses a unique challenge.
“We don’t have full-time professionals who have years of industry experience putting this together,” said Etienne Sirois, senior in FAA and ISD’s 2025-2026 project manager. “It’s a great opportunity for students to get hands-on experience, but we also don’t know how every part of certain mechanical systems work.”
ISD has partnered with private contractor Broeren Russo Brothers Inc. for this project. Their input gives ISD the final piece of the puzzle they need to make BEACON Home a reality.
ISD also works with Habitat for Humanity to ensure its final product is affordable. Habitat for Humanity has worked with them before, connecting them with families in need and helping them tailor the home to the needs of the prospective owner.
Beyond construction, these partnerships also assist ISD in business matters, like dealing with banks and filing taxes.
“We’re students,” Jain said. “We’ve never done all this adult stuff.”
They recognize that the work takes more than just building. It requires connected, united efforts on multiple fronts.
“BEACON Home really brings a lot of actions and issues together into one kind of feasible direction,” Sirois said. “We’re combining aspects of community engagement … making sure that the family that will be getting this home understands the maintenance requirements with it.”
ISD broke ground in February and hopes that the house will begin taking shape in the next month. The land they purchased also has space for two more homes, one built by Habitat for Humanity and another also designed by ISD.
These plans encapsulate ISD’s mission and its overall vision for BEACON Home: to create neighborhoods of accessible, energy efficient housing, one groundbreaking moment at a time.
