Recovery Act Solar Market Transformation | Apply Online

Opportunity Summary:

The Recovery Act Solar Market Transformation funding opportunity (DE FOA 0000078) is a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) discretionary grant and cooperative agreement program administered through DOE's Golden Field Office. It was released as part of Recovery Act energy activities under CFDA 81.117 (Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Information Dissemination, Outreach, Training and Technical Analysis/Assistance). The overall intent is to speed up real-world solar market adoption by tackling practical barriers that slow deployment and by strengthening the workforce needed to install grid-tied solar technologies at scale.

The FOA is organized into two topics with different target applicants and outcomes. Topic 1 focuses on city-led solar market transformation. DOE specifically looks to the existing Solar America Cities network to take innovative local programs, policies, and implementation concepts and scale them so they can be tested across a broader marketplace. The logic behind this approach is that cities are not just end users of electricity; they also influence solar adoption through permitting, zoning, building codes, local incentives, procurement, public facilities, and their ability to convene local stakeholders. Under Topic 1, DOE expects funded cities to build projects aligned with their citywide solar implementation plans, with an emphasis on addressing concrete urban solar barriers (for example, streamlining permitting and inspection, reducing soft costs, improving interconnection processes, designing local financing or group-purchasing models, or other city-anchored mechanisms). A key requirement is replicability: projects should be designed so that other Solar America Cities, other U.S. cities and local governments, states, and even international jurisdictions can adopt the approaches at least in part.

Topic 2 addresses workforce development for the solar industry, with emphasis on improving the quality and availability of training related to installation of grid-tied photovoltaic (PV) and solar heating and cooling (SHC) systems. The intent is explicitly not to fund off-grid PV applications; instead, the training focus is on residential, commercial, and utility-scale grid-tied markets, plus SHC. In practical terms, this topic supports training providers and institutions in expanding or improving instructional capacity, curriculum, and hands-on training infrastructure so more workers can be trained to install solar systems correctly and safely, helping raise overall installation quality while meeting growing labor demand.

Eligibility differs sharply by topic. Topic 1 is restricted eligibility under 10 CFR 600.6(b) to the 25 Solar America Cities previously selected under the FY07 and FY08 Solar City Strategic Partnerships FOAs (DE-PS36-07GO97007 and DE-PS36-08GO98003). Topic 2, by contrast, is open to all domestic entities and institutions, making it the broader-access track for universities, community colleges, training organizations, nonprofits, private firms, and other U.S.-based applicants that can credibly deliver workforce training improvements tied to grid-tied PV and SHC installation.

From a funding and administrative standpoint, awards range from a $100,000 floor to a $6,000,000 ceiling, and cost sharing is required. The FOA was posted May 27, 2009, with an application closing date of July 30, 2009 (and an archive date of September 27, 2009). Applications had to be submitted through FedConnect (with an allowance for organizations using system-to-system submissions via Grants.gov, which DOE would accept as well). DOE also emphasized early registration because applicants needed a DUNS number and an active Central Contractor Registration (CCR) account (the predecessor to today's SAM.gov registration), and organizations were told to allow at least 21 days to complete CCR and FedConnect registration if starting from scratch. Questions about FOA content were routed through the FedConnect portal so that answers could be shared publicly with interested parties, while technical submission issues were directed to FedConnect support.

In short, this opportunity used Recovery Act funds to push solar adoption forward in two complementary ways: by enabling a select group of leading cities to pilot and scale replicable market transformation strategies (Topic 1), and by strengthening the national pipeline of trained installers for grid-tied PV and SHC systems through improved instruction and training capacity (Topic 2).

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