$10 Million Prize for Companies that Can Install 5,000 New Rooftop Solar Panel Systems for $2/Watt

As part of the US Department of Energy’s SunShot Initiative, the DOE is offering $10 million prize to companies that can install 5,000 new rooftop solar panel systems for an average price of $2/watt or less.

The first place prize is $7 million, second place is $2 million, and third place is $1 million. The rankings will be based on how low the installers can get their prices.

“Each of the 5,000 required installations must have a power range between 1 and 15 kilowatts. (The average U.S. home used the energy equivalent of 1.3 kilowatts per hour in 2010, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.) They must also be installed between Aug. 1, 2012, and Dec. 31, 2014,” LiveScience writes.

“Limits exist on what entries count for the SunShot Prize competition, because the rooftop solar panels must sit on buildings inhabited by humans. That excludes sheds, doghouses and small scale solar farms, but a garage attached to a home would count.”

In addition to the above, the DOE has awarded another $8 million in its latest round of Sunshot announcements, including the $1.5 million awarded to Clean Power Finance that I discussed earlier today and the $500,000 EnergySage received “to develop and implement a web-based solar photovoltaic (PV) comparison-shopping platform that will provide pricing transparency and facilitate open market interactions between property owners and solar PV installers” that I mentioned in our last Solar Energy News roundup. We might be featuring some more of the winners in the coming days as well

Notably, the SunShot Incubator program has been getting $30 in private investment for every $1 of government funding — pretty good, eh?

Image: solar installation via Shutterstock