The manufacturing and competitiveness research area funds projects that investigate and validate 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. The manufacturing and competitiveness team, formerly known as technology to market, targets funding gaps that occur in the initial proof of concept, pre-commercial stage.
Today, there is one annual funding program under manufacturing and competitiveness that encompasses projects at all stages of technology development with the goal of developing pathways to commercialization for disruptive innovation. Projects focus on a wide variety of topics including photovoltaics, concentrating solar-thermal power, and power electronics, as well as soft costs such as customer acquisition, permitting, financing, interconnection, and inspection. This annual funding program is structured to ensure that recipients achieve technical milestones during the course of their research and development project.
The manufacturing and competitiveness team helps small businesses develop ideas into successful technologies that benefit the solar industry. Other projects help to build a strong clean energy manufacturing sector and supply chain that produce cost-competitive clean energy products and can keep pace with the rising domestic and global demand for affordable solar energy. Additionally, hardware products like advanced inverters and utility-scale tracking systems allow solar energy to be produced as cost-effectively as possible. Cost analysis is a critical component that ties all of this work together to measure the current state of the solar industry. Projects across these areas aim to benefit the solar market and help the industry evolve and thrive. View a complete list of manufacturing and competitiveness funding programs.
View the Manufacturing and Competitiveness (Technology to Market) fact sheet (PDF).
Manufacturing and Competitiveness Success Stories
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