Solar Prize Round 2 Journey (Text Version)
Below is the text version for the Solar Prize Round 2 Journey video.
From September 2019 to August 2020, 20 teams competed in the American-Made Solar Prize Round 2 in the hopes of winning part of $3 million. Follow their journey and see who the final winners were.
Text on screen: In September 2019, 20 innovators across the U.S. started their journey through a competition aimed at energizing the American Solar industry ...
The solar Prize Round 2.
Debbie Brodt-Giles, Solar Prize administrator, National Renewable Energy Laboratory: The Solar Prize is a $3-million prize competition that's really geared to invigorate the solar industry, especially when it comes to US manufacturing. Round 2 is the second cohort of the Solar Prize.
Text on screen: The 20 teams earned $50,000 each for their creative technologies and continued to the next phase of the competition: the Set! Contest. They got to work transforming their ideas into proofs-of-concept in preparation for an in-person Demo Day event.
Sarah Gomach, Solar Prize administrator, National Renewable Energy Laboratory: The Solar Prize was designed for teams, at two points during the contest, to do an in-person Demo Day pitch and product demonstration. Unfortunately, with the virtual state of the world, we switched our programming to be all virtual this year.
Text on screen: When COVID-19 turned everything virtual, teams had a few weeks to pivot their approach to compete in a virtual Demo Day. They recorded their pitches and used video conferencing to discuss their products with expert reviewers. At the end of the virtual event, 10 teams were announced as finalists, each winning $100,000 in cash prises and $75,000 in technical support. As the finalists moved on to the third phase of competition, they came up with creative ways to continue making progress while much of the world was shut down.
Sarah: A lot of these teams really faced challenges around a place to get things done. We got teams who were converting their living rooms into task facilities, their garages into workshops, and really being creative in how they were going to construct things. And so, teams did a lot to overcome.
Text on screen: In the third phase of the competition, the Round 2 finalists again competed virtually in the hopes of taking home half a million dollars. Finally, the winners of the Solar Prize Round 2 were announced ...
Daniel Simmons, assistant secretary, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, U.S. Department of Energy: The first winner is—Resilient Power Systems from Georgetown, Texas. This team developed a hybrid inverter that enables interconnection between solar, storage, and other energy systems using a novel wide band gap technology. This power router enables direct connection of these resources to the medium voltage distribution grid, integrating transformers and inverters into a single unit. So, congratulations, Resilient Power Systems.
Tom Kiester, American-Made Solar Prize Round 2 winner, Resilient Power Systems: The competition was great. They raised the bar. I mean, every time we'd look online and read what they're doing and stuff, it was really challenging, and we knew we had to do our very best.
Daniel: The second winner is—SunFlex Solar from Tempe, Arizona. This team is replacing the copper back sheets on a standard back contacted silicon solar cell with aluminum, which costs less. They will use a high-speed laser to weld the aluminum back sheet to the silicon wafer. So, good job, SunFlex.
Kate Fisher, American-Made Solar Prize Round 2 winner, SunFlex Solar: I was surprised. I've looked at all of the pitch videos from the other teams, and the competition was really actually quite tough and kind of was quietly optimistic, but I actually thought that we maybe we're not gonna win. And then we did, which was very funny.
Text on screen: Both teams received $500,000 in cash prizes and $75,000 in support vouchers. They plan to use this money to continue testing and working toward commercialization.
Zachary Holman, American-Made Solar Prize Round 2 winner, SunFlex Solar: It's a huge enabler. It's a funding that we need at exactly the right time.
Josh Kiester, American-Made Solar Prize Round 2 winner, Resilient Power Systems: We stumbled upon these huge opportunities because the Solar Prize made us be more aggressive in pursuing customers and pilots, and those opportunities have really grown to such an extent that we couldn't have even imagined.
Text on screen: With the help of the solar prize, these innovators have accelerated their technologies closer to their market-ready potential.
Josh: The way the American-Made Solar Prize is structured, you need to start with the problem and demonstrate customer interest, a market, and the entire business case beyond just impressive technology.
Zachary: They Solar Prize is the challenge and the opportunity of a lifetime for a new solar technology, a new solar business here in the US.
Sarah: Congratulations, SunFlex Solar and Resilient Power Systems. We were so glad to see the work that you did over the last year and are excited to see what you can do for the U.S. solar industry.
Text on screen: Congratulations, SunFlex Solar and Resilient Power Systems!
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