SunShot Prize

About the Challenge

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) SunShot Initiative aims to make subsidy-free solar energy cost-competitive with conventional forms of energy by the end of the decade. SunShot drives American innovation in manufacturing, engineering, and business through a series of programs designed to spark and promote market solutions to solar energy development and clean energy growth.

The global average wholesale price for photovoltaic (PV) modules fell from $4.10 per watt (W) in 2007 to $2.40/W in 2010. The average spot price of solar modules has continued to fall and is below $1/W in 2012, while the capacity-weighted average of behind-the-meter U.S. PV system prices declined from $7.90/W to $6.20/W over the same period. Despite unprecedented cost reductions for solar hardware over recent years, the total price to install and commission residential and small-commercial scale solar energy systems remains high. Designing and implementing practices that enable dramatic reductions in the associated non-hardware costs — deemed the "soft costs" — of solar is now the greatest challenge to achieving national targets for attaining cost-competitive solar by 2020. The SunShot Prize will motivate a new class of solar innovators, directing their efforts at solving the soft cost challenge.

The $10 million SunShot Prize challenges the ingenuity of America’s businesses and communities to make it faster, easier, and cheaper to install rooftop solar energy systems. Successful competitors will deploy domestically and in two phases, at least 6,000 new rooftop photovoltaic installations at an average pre-subsidy non-hardware cost of $1 per watt. Winners will break this significant price barrier, considered to be unachievable a decade ago, and prove that they can repeatedly achieve a $1 per watt non-hardware cost using innovative, verifiable processes and business practices.

Download the Rules here