The Sunny Awards for Equitable Community Solar (The Sunny Awards) is a $100,000 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.

Community solar is any solar project or purchasing program in which the benefits of a solar project flow to multiple customers such as individuals, businesses, nonprofits, and other groups, within a certain geographic area. Community solar projects and programs can vary significantly in their structure, implementation, and benefits they provide. The best practices of the projects and programs recognized by the Sunny Awards will provide a blueprint for community solar developers, state energy offices, utilities, and others to help achieve the National Community Solar Partnership (NCSP) target to power the equivalent of five million households with community solar by 2025, generating $1 billion in electricity bill savings.

Announced on July 27, 2022, by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Solar Energy Technologies Office (SETO), the Sunnys offer up to five $10,000 Sunny Awards Grand Prizes to the top teams and up to 50 additional $1,000 Sunny Finalist Awards to competitors that find effective ways to equitably deliver the specific, meaningful benefits of community solar identified by NCSP. The finalists were announced on November 9, 2022. The Grand Prize winners and Meaningful Benefit Category Special Recognition winners were announced on January 19, 2023, at the 2023 NCSP Annual Summit.

Overview

To apply, community solar projects and programs needed to prove that they provide meaningful benefits in at least one of the following primary Meaningful Benefit categories:

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

Meaningful Benefit Category Special Recognition was awarded to the top three competitors in each of the primary Meaningful Benefit categories above, as well as in two innovation categories:

• Innovation Category: Community Engagement
• Innovation Category: Impact

Teams nominated 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) by submitting a narrative application and a set of appropriate, complete, and verifiable supporting evidence.

Interested participants can read the official rules on the HeroX platform.

Award Stages

Sunny Finalist Awards

Sunny Finalist Award winners received a cash prize of $1,000 and advanced in the prize challenge.

Sunny Grand Prize Awards

A panel of external reviewers, using a pre-determined and publicly available set of scoring guidance, selected winners for two types of Grand Prize awards:

Sunny Grand Prize Award Winners: 

• Finalists that met eligibility requirements across 2 or more meaningful benefit award categories competed for a Sunny Grand Prize Award for Equitable Community Solar.
• No more than five projects or programs that demonstrated significant achievement in delivering meaningful benefits across multiple categories were selected as Sunny Grand Prize Award winners and are eligible to receive $10,000 in prize money.

Meaningful Benefit Category Special Recognition:

• DOE also presented non-monetary awards to recognize programs or projects in each of the meaningful benefits categories, including the two innovation categories.

Winners of the Sunny Grand Prize Awards and Meaningful Benefit Special Recognition Awards are invited to participate in a series of DOE-hosted webinars and events on community solar best practices. Winners’ best practices will be used to develop a collection of case studies to encourage greater adoption of these practices.

Grand Prize Winners

Community Power: Jobs and Savings for LMI Households
Brooklyn, NY 

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

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

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

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

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