The American-Made Sunny Awards for Equitable Community Solar (The Sunny Awards) is a prize competition that recognizes community solar projects and programs that employ or develop best practices to increase equitable 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 equitably 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
• Equitable 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.

Grand Prize Winners

Community Power: Jobs and Savings for LMI Households
Brooklyn, NY | CEC Stuyvesant Cove, Inc. dba Solar One
Community Power delivers energy savings to 500 households, provided workforce training, and offered paid jobs to public housing residents.

District of Columbia's Solar for All
Washington, DC | DC Department of Energy and Environment
Solar for All is a program designed to reduce electricity bills for households in Washington, DC, through single-family and community solar projects.

Faribault Community Solar
Faribault, MN | Cooperative Energy Futures
The Faribault Community Solar project is a cooperatively-owned community solar array serving mostly low-to-moderate income residents in southern Minnesota.

JOE-4-SUN Ashland
Ashland, MA | Citizens Energy Corporation 
JOE-4-SUN Ashland is a 6 MW community solar project that saves low-to-moderate income households over $400 per year on electricity costs and brings the benefits of clean, renewable energy to a superfund site.

Shungnak-Kobuk Community Solar Battery Independent Power Producer
Shungnak, AK | Northwest Arctic Borough
This solar and battery project led by the Shungnak and Kobuk tribes in the Northwest Arctic Borough region in Alaska aims to stabilize the cost of electricity and allow the communities to take charge of their energy future.

Meaningful Benefit Category Special Recognition Winners