The US Department of Energy (DoE) has launched its SunShot Prize competition to recognize any community-based solar business model or program design that can bring solar at scale. This comes just after the department announced fresh funding opportunities for other initiatives under its SunShot Initiative (see New SunShot Funding Opportunities).
SunShot is an important program to push solar power in the US. Recently the DoE declared that the country has been able to achieve 90% of the goals it had targeted under this program by 2016, ahead of the 2020 deadline (see SunShot Progress).
The competition is called Solar in Your Community Challenge. It is a $5 million prize challenge open to teams working to develop a portfolio of solar projects in their communities or create new solar programs that extend solar access to low and moderate income (LMI) homes and nonprofits. It is also open to technical assistance providers as consultants and coaches that assist teams throughout the 18-month challenge by providing coaching and resources teams need to create innovative new business models. The latter will be compensated depending on their services used during the tenure of the challenge.
The challenge participants may receive three distinct types of awards: seed awards, technical assistance vouchers and final prizes. They would be required to design and deploy new and scalable business and financial models through the demonstration of solar projects and programs in their communities.
Participants will be required to complete their PV systems within 18-month performance period, and generate peak DC capacity in the range of 25 kWh to 5,000 kWh.
There will be an informational webinar on November 29, 2016; the early application deadline is scheduled to be January 6, 2017; and final
application deadline is March 17, 2017. The late-start application deadline is August 1, 2017. Final prize winner names are expected to be announced in January 2019.
Further details can be accessed on the Department of Energy's website.