SunShot Initiative

The SunShot Initiative is a federal government program run by the US Department of Energy's Solar Energy Technologies Office. It bills itself as a national effort to support solar energy adoption in order to make solar energy affordable for all Americans. The initiative is a collaboration of private companies, universities, state and local governments, and nonprofits, as well as national laboratories.[1]

The program began in 2011 with the initial goal of making solar energy competitive with traditional forms of electricity by 2020. The federal government invested $282 million in FY 2015 to fund the SunShot Initiative.[2] According to the SunShot Q4 2016/Q1 2017 Solar Industry Update report, The United States installed 14.8 GW of PV in 2016, an increase of 97% from 2015, representing approximately $30 billion in deployed capital, along with another $2.2 billion in U.S.- manufactured PV products.[3]

By 2016, the program achieved 90% of the progress towards the 2020 goal.[4] In September 2017, it was announced that it had already reached its 2020 goal, and was now refocusing on grid reliability issues.[5]

Goals and mission

When the program was first launched in 2011 it set a series of goals and cost targets:[1]

  • $0.09 per kilowatt hour for residential photovoltaics (PV)
  • $0.07 per kilowatt hour for commercial PV
  • $0.06 per kilowatt hour for utility-scale PV

In 2016, the SunShot Initiative announced new cost targets that it wanted to be achieved by the year 2030:[1]

  • $0.05 per kilowatt hour for residential PV
  • $0.04 per kilowatt hour for commercial PV
  • $0.03 per kilowatt hour for utility-scale PV

According to the program, "These cost targets inform the decisions SunShot makes to spur the country’s solar market and drive deployment of solar energy."[1]

Organization

The SunShot Initiative is divided into five subprograms:[1]

  • Photovoltaics - supports the early-stage research and development of photovoltaic (PV) technologies that improve efficiency and reliability, lower manufacturing costs, and drive down the cost of solar electricity.
  • Concentrating Solar Power - supports the development of novel CSP technologies that will lower cost, increase efficiency, and improve reliability compared to current state-of-the-art technologies.
  • Systems Integration - seeks to enable the widespread deployment of secure, reliable, and cost effective solar energy on the nation’s electricity grid by addressing the associated technical and organizational challenges.
  • Soft Costs - addresses challenges associated with non-hardware costs of solar and remove market barriers to the adoption of solar energy technologies.
  • Technology to Market - this subprogram investigates and validates groundbreaking, early-stage technology, software, and business models to strengthen early-stage concepts and move them toward readiness for greater private sector investment and scale-up to commercialization.

All subprograms issue competitive awards to universities, national laboratories, nonprofit organizations, solar companies, and state and local governments to fund research and development projects that will aid in lowering the cost of electricity generated from solar technology.[6]

Below is a spending breakdown of the Soft Costs program for fiscal year 2015:[2]

  • $5.8 Million – Solar research at National Laboratories
  • $17.4 Million – Funding pilot programs for solar incentives/subsidies
  • $8 Million – Education training
  • $6 Million – Study solar panel deployment on federal lands
  • $5 Million – Studies on streamlining solar data to “increase access to financing”
  • $2 Million – Using students to develop plans for local government policies that help solar

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 "SunShot Initiative Goals | Department of Energy". energy.gov. Retrieved 2017-02-14.
  2. 1 2 FY 2015 Congressional Budget Request, U.S. Department of Energy.
  3. ↑ "Q4 2016/Q1 2017 Presentation - Solar Industry Update | Department of Energy". energy.gov. Retrieved 2017-08-21.
  4. ↑ "SunShot Initiative Goals | Department of Energy". energy.gov. Retrieved 2017-08-21.
  5. ↑ Geuss, Megan (13 September 2017). Arstechnica https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/09/solar-now-costs-6-per-kilowatt-hour-beating-government-goal-by-3-years/. Missing or empty |title= (help)
  6. ↑ "About the SunShot Initiative | Department of Energy". energy.gov. Retrieved 2017-08-21.
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