The 2022 Sunny Awards for Community Solar

A colorful flyer showing illlustrated hands holding a trophy in front of solar panels and buildings. Text reads, "The Sunny Awards for Community Solar. American-Made Solar Prize. Sponsored by the National Community Solar Partnership.""

The American-Made Sunny Awards for Community Solar (The Sunny Awards) is a prize competition that recognizes community solar projects and programs that employ or develop best practices to increase access to the meaningful benefits of community solar for subscribers and their communities.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Solar Energy Technologies Office (SETO) announced the 2022 Sunny Awards on July 27, 2022. With $100,000 in prizes available, this first round offered up to five $10,000 Sunny Awards Grand Prizes to the top teams and 31 additional $1,000 Sunny Finalist Awards to competitors who found effective ways to deliver the specific, meaningful benefits of community solar identified by the National Community Solar Partnership (NCSP). SETO announced the finalists on November 9, 2022 and Grand Prize winners on January 19, 2023.

About the Prize

To participate, teams submitted applications for either a community solar project (individual community solar installations) or program (state, district, territory, or utility-run initiatives that enable, incentivize, or otherwise support the development of multiple community solar projects within a specific jurisdiction). Applications needed to prove the project or program provided meaningful benefits in at least one of the following categories:

  • Greater Households Savings
  • Low- to moderate-income (LMI) Household Access
  • Resilience and Grid Benefits
  • Community Ownership
  • Workforce Development

Sunny Finalist Award winners received a cash prize of $1,000 and advanced in the prize challenge. For the Grand Prize, a panel of external reviewers used a pre-determined and publicly available set of scoring guidance to select five projects/programs to win $10,000. These projects/programs were able to demonstrate significant achievement in delivering meaningful benefits across multiple categories. Additionally, non-monetary awards recognized programs or projects in each of the meaningful benefits categories, including two extra categories of Community Engagement and Innovation in Impact.


Learn more about the National Community Solar Partnership.