As I mentioned before, we are recording this webinar. So please mute your phones and if you do speak or turn on your video it's implied that you're giving consent that we're recording your voice. So as you're reading through the Funding Opportunity and looking through this presentation, which will be put on EPIC as well. The document in EPIC is the controlling document, so you should rely on the FOA language there. And if you have any questions, please click on the "Submit Announcement Specific Question to EERE" button in EPIC to send us questions. We periodically will update our Q&A's on the website with any questions that come through. So as I said earlier, any questions submitted through the chat feature in WebEx today or sent to us at the email listed there, we will post all the answers in the Q&A on EPIC. That's not on Exchange, so everyone will have access to it. We will not be answering any questions during this meeting. 

To start off everything. So you're all well aware of the schedule, The Funding Opportunity was published last month on the 16th and next Monday, January 11th is our deadline for Letters of Intent. And all of the submission deadlines are at 5 p.m. Eastern. Be well aware that if you intend on submitting a Concept Paper for this Funding Opportunity, you need to submit a Letter of Intent on by January 11th at 5 p.m. In the EPIC system. From there, the Concept Paper submission deadline is on January 25th. We expect to get responses back from those Concept Papers to you in the mid February time frame. You'll receive an email once your feedback is available for your Concept Paper. And the deadline for Full Applications is March 29th. After we'll discuss, the schedule in a little more detail later in the presentation, but you will receive Reviewer Comments from your Full Application, and you will be given the opportunity to provide a reply to those Reviewer Comments. And that deadline will be April 28th we'll give you at least three business days to, formulate your replies and submit them, and we expect to announced Selection Notifications in the mid June on 22nd. So, as I stated earlier, all deadlines for your submissions are 5 p.m. Eastern time on the date.

So our agenda for this webinar will be going over general description of the Funding Opportunity and the Technical/Topic Areas that are presented within the Funding Opportunity. We'll go over some of the Award Information and what it means to have Substantial Involvement from the DOE as part of these projects, as they're all cooperative agreements. We'll go over some of the Cost Share guidelines. A little more detail on the FOA Timeline, as well as talking about what constitutes a Concept Paper and a Full Application and how they're reviewed during our Merit Review and Selection Process. And we'll close out this webinar with some additional information about the EPIC system. If you have applied to our Funding Opportunities in the past, you're probably familiar with EERE Exchange. We are moving to a new system, so it's a little bit different, but there's lots of very good help guides that are built into the EPIC system to help you submit any of the applications and review material.

So this Funding Opportunity is our Systems Integration and Hardware Incubator funding program. We're seeking to invest in innovative research, development and demonstration projects that enable solar to contribute to the reliability and resilience of the nation's electricity grid and continue to drive down costs while developing next generation solar technologies boosting American solar manufacturing. These projects will support the scalability of solar as deployment increases across the country so that solar is affordable, supports grid reliability, and benefits the US economy.

We have three topics within this Funding Opportunity. The third topic does have 2 subtopics in it, so effectively there are four different topics that we will be discussing as part of this webinar.

Topic 1 is our Grid-Forming Technologies Research Consortium. The Solar Office and the Wind Energy Technology Office is teaming together to create a Grid-Forming Technologies Research Consortium which will bring together researchers and stakeholders to advance research on grid-forming solar, wind, and storage inverters and other grid-forming technologies. To ensure that these technologies will enhance our system operations for years to come. This topic identifies wide-ranging research areas which I'll go over in the following slides that will address research and development and demonstration efforts, including voltage and frequency control, hardware design, and standards. The goal is to form a consortium that will be financially sustainable, world-leading innovation group within five years after the launch of the program.

So what we're looking for within this Grid-Forming Technologies Research Consortium, there are eight different research topics that were want proposals to focus on in using grid-forming inverters to provide frequency and voltage control to the grid, as well as looking at the modeling and simulation efforts that are needed for inverter models to supply the proper detail for doing electromagnetic transient program modeling. As well as looking at larger systems simulation and modeling, but bringing together multiple grid-forming resources. Another Topic Area of concern for this consortium is providing system protection using these grid-forming inverters as well as being able to support the black start of the grid and resilience event scenarios. There is room for hardware development design as well as looking at standards development for the greater industry in developing grid-forming technology.

There are five different factors that will be weighing on how you'll be bridging those research concept by looking at how scalable that your proposals are in terms of this, the size of the grid, how it will enhance reliability of the overall electrical system, as well as looking at stability during transient. And there will be a demonstration phase of these projects; looking at being able to demonstrate the microgrid of more than one megawatt peak load and having [unintelligible] being able to interact with the utility scale power grid that has more than 20 megawatts of peak load as well. There is also sections that should be addressing the human factors and how we'll be able to train the existing workforce on these different technologies and software tools that will be developed as part of the consortium's research.

So successful submissions to this Topic Area, you need to be able to show how the technology that you'll be researching will be applicable to different geographic regions as well as a variety of scales in the terms of the size of the grid you'll be interacting with. We're looking for a robust stakeholder engagement among academic and nonprofitsas well as vendors and utilities. And ensuring that the scope of work that you propose will keep the consortium's research relevant to what the industry needs as the grid evolved. Looking to commercialize the research that comes out of this as well as disseminating all of the information and research results to the broader industry and the general audience.

Moving on to Topic 2: Integrating Behind-the-Meter Solar Resources into Utility Data Systems. The growing adoption of behind-the-meter distributed solar resources installed in utility distribution feeders is increasing the impact of these systems on both the local and bulk power grids in the aggregate. So despite this trend, distributes utilities do not generally monitor these behind-the-meter resources in real time. So we're looking for proposals that can utilize smart meter and feeder level measurements to collect that data and provide grid operators with real time measurements on distribution feeders so that they can incorporate it into their data systems and improve the situational awareness on their feeders and realized the potential value of coordinating these behind-the-meter resources together as well from solar energy resources as well as other distributed energy resources.

Successful submissions in this Topic Area, we're looking for new innovative sensor hardware and system designs that will reduce the cost of those sensors that will be utilized in the network. We're also looking to see field demonstrations of these data collection systems on medium both systems as well as looking at approaches that air scalable, continuing to look at the cost and a wide range of feeder sizes from, you know, down to a few behind-the-meter resources to very high penetration scenarios with thousands of customer nodes. We also are looking for strategies to collect these highly distributed sensor data into an interoperable and affordable manner so that, as I mentioned earlier, could be utilized within the utility data systems and synchronized so that we could be using this data in distribution and transmission systems that make real time operation decision.

There's some other topics of interest that can be considered as part of your submission as long as they're looking at the areas that I mentioned earlier. But we're also looking at different data gathering and management... data gathering, filtering, and management software so that we can detect any errors in the data as well as incorporating existing technologies into the utility control software schemes as well as other sensor uses such as monitoring hardware degradation of both utility and customer-owned, as well as capturing high-fidelity waveform measurements for modeling these power electronics behaviors and characterizing different faults or attacks that may occur on the system.

Moving on to Topic Area 3. Topic Area 3 is our Hardware Incubator program, which I mentioned earlier has two distinct subtopics within it. So the subtopic A is our Product Development subtopic. And these topics are looking to accelerate the commercialization of innovative product ideas within this solar space utilizing US domestic manufacturing. So we're looking to de-risk new technologies and manufacturing processes so that these technologies can provide a commercially relevant prototype during the time frame of the project. So this is research and development which will require 20% cost share as part of the research and development phases.

And successful applicants will need to be for profit companies which are incorporated domestically with the United States at the time of submission. The application should provide us a feasibility study on the technical and business viability of the technology that you proposed. In addition, you should demonstrate critical functionality. Show how, during the phases of the project, you'll be demonstrating critical functionality of your proof of concept in a controlled lab scale environment.

Yeah. Moving on to the different types of areas we're looking for. So SETO is looking to support solutions, as I mentioned, earlier to advance domestic manufacturing in solar energy technologies, including materials and tools focused in these areas that we're looking for advanced solar system integration technologies that enhance the ability of solar energy systems to contribute to grid reliability, resilience and security. Concentrating solar power in solar thermal industrial process heat applications. As well as PV technologies focused on manufacturing innovations and looking at hardware technologies that can reduce the balance of system costs for a PV system. In addition, the Solar Energy Technology Office is looking for solutions in the floating solar-powered aeration system.

Moving on to subtopic 3B. This is, like I mentioned earlier, a continuation of our Hardware Incubator topic. And these topics are more focused on pilot scale testing and demonstration of the technology at hand. So 3A is focused on more early stage and 3B is more of late state technology into development where you're able to take that prototype and do pilot testing and demonstration in the field. As such, because there's field demonstration aspect as a part of this, there's a 50% cost share that's required for these projects that is beyond the research and development tasks that are involved.

Some areas that were specifically looking to focus on in our Product Development and Demonstration topic are the development of high-volume and high-throughput manufacturing processes for solar hardware. Of course they're manufactured in competitively in the United States. A swell as being able to produce a sufficiently large number of devices to be statistically robust for field testing and validation. So moving beyond that simple prototype development and being able to commercially manufacturer multiple devices that could be used during the field est. And also telling us how you'll be demonstrating the new hardware components in a robust commercially relevant pilot systems, such as innovative solar systems or microgrid system architectures developed in collaboration with relevant partners such as energy service companies and utilities.

So similar to Topic 3A, we're looking for technologies that will help advance our solar systems integration technologies and grid reliability, resilience, and security. As well as concentrating solar power and solar thermal industrial process, heat technologies, and manufacturing innovations and PV technologies as well as reducing balance system costs.

As for nonresponsive applications, there is a number of points listed in section in each one of the topics in the Funding Opportunity as well as Section 1 Bravo. Which will detail all of the types of technology that we consider nonresponsive to these topics such as, not based on sound scientific principles.

As part of this Funding Opportunity, we will be publishing a Teaming List. There are instructions on the Program Information Center website, as well as what's listed here. So if you're looking to be included in the Teaming List, please provide this information to the SETO.FOA@ee.doe.gov email address. We will be periodically updating that list and we uploading it to the EPIC platform. So that anyone who is interested in applying to this Funding Opportunity could take a look at that Teaming List and potentially partner up with each other. We are facilitating this Teaming List by maintaining on the website. But your inclusion on the Teaming List does not indicate that we have endorsed or otherwise evaluated the qualifications of any of the entities that are on the list. We've just taken their information and placed it there for you to be able to reach out and contact each other if you're interested in teaming.

So a little bit more information about the awards that will be made as part of this Funding Opportunity. There is approximately $45 million allotted to the Funding Opportunity and we anticipate that the awards made will be ranged anywhere in size from 500,000 to 25 million. There was a period of performance of anywhere from 18 months to 16 months of this five years. And there's a variety of funding agreement types that can be made as part of this Funding Opportunity, but the vast majority of awards that will be made out of this will be cooperative agreements, which I'll discuss a little bit more about in the following slides. As I mentioned, there is a 20 to 50% cost share requirement with any of these applications, and I'll give a little bit more detail upon that in the future side as well.

So, as I mentioned, these awards will be made a cooperative agreement, and cooperative agreement requires that there is substantial involvement from the Solar Energy Technology Office and the Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Office as part of the award. So we're not limiting ourselves to just involvement on the administration requirements of the award. We participate in the entire process in terms of negotiating the direction or redirection of any of the technical aspects of the project throughout its lifetime. So there will be opportunities to evaluate the project throughout the project to reach budget period, where it will be looking at the Go/No Go decision points what your proposed with your applications and determine if there's any redirection or discontinuing the funding based on the progress towards those Go/No Go decision point. We will also participate with major team members of your proposals. to work on any decision making processes throughout the majority of the project.

As for cost share, there is cost a requirement for this Funding Opportunity. A little bit of detail about the cost share requirements, so any research and development or education and outreach portions of a project are required to have a 20% cost share and any demonstration projects or the activity that which are being the demonstration portions of a project require 50% cost share. And these must come from non-federal sources unless there's something else allowed by law. 

Here's a breakdown of each one of the topics. So within Topic Area one, they're are expectations of research and development outreach, as well as demonstration portions of the project. There. There will be some phases of the project that required 20% cost share, some phases of the project required 50% cost share in Topic Area 2, similarly, there will be phases of the project, which will be entirely research and development, which will require 20% cost share. The demonstration faces will require 50. And as I mentioned earlier Topic 3A, the Product Development section of our incubator topic will require a 20% cost share. And Topic 3B, the later stage Product Development and Demonstration projects will require a 50% cost share as part of this project.

Cost Share Contributions: They must be specified in the project budget. They will need to be verifiable as well. And necessary and reasonable for proper and efficient accomplishment of the project. So if you are selected for negotiations, all cost share contributions will be reviewed and approved by the Contracting Officer and as I mentioned that we specified within the budget. And please note that vendors and contractors may not provide any cost share. So partial donation of goods or services is considered a discount and is not allowable. Cost share is allowable from Subrecipients, but not from vendors or contract.

If you need additional information about what is allowable for cost shares, there are the Cost Principal guidelines which are published for profit entities in [unintelligble] the FAR Part 31. And for all other non-federal entities, the two CFR part 200 Subpart E the Cost Principles. So I recommend you review the documents to fully understand what is allowable for caution.

They're basically broken down into two main categories. There's Cash Contributions, which may be provided by the Subrecipient are the Prime Recipient and Subrecipients. However, like I mentioned earlier, not from vendors or contractors. As well in kind contributions which can be typically the donation of space or use of equipment from the Prime Recipient. As well as there are limited amounts of volunteer time, which is allowed by third parties that is not allowed from the Prime Recipient or Subrecipients.

Unallowable costs share the Prime Recipient may not use these sources as cost share, which are: Revenues or royalties from the operations of any activity beyond the project period. Any proceeds from perspective sale of an asset that was used during this activity. As well as any federal funding or any federal property cannot be used as any kind of cost share. Also, expenditures reimbursed under other Federal Technology Office. The same cash or in-kind contributions for one or more project or program. So one time use only for what you use your cost share for. As well as mentioned multiple times before, vendor and contractor contribution.

These cost your payments, they must provide documentation on how their contributed over the course of the award. The cost share requirement, those percentages mentioned earlier the 20 and 50% are cumulative based on each invoice. So each invoice must reflect at a minimum the cost share percentage negotiated. It carries through cumulatively. So if you're over your negotiated cost share requirement on a prior invoice, that cost share can be lower than in the subsequent invoices. And there are limited circumstances where the Contracting Officer may approve requests to shift that cross share requirement to a less frequent basis such as monthly or quarterly basis.

A little more detail on the timeline for the Funding Opportunity. As I mentioned at the beginning of this process, all Submission Deadlines are at 5 p.m. Eastern on the date listed. The important ones that are coming up soon. Letters of Intent are due on January 11th. This is in the EPIC program, so you need to submit a Letter of Intent in order to submit a Concept Paper on which are due on January 25th. They'll be the Concept Paper review period, which we're looking to get feedback from the Concert Papers back to applicants in the middle of February to allow you time to write Full Applications. Which will be due on March 29th. Sometime in mid mid to late April, you'll receive Reviewer Comments on your Full Applications, and you'll be given approximately three business days to provide a reply to those Reviewer Comments was when anticipating those. The due date for that will be April 28 with making selections in mid June and starting negotiations shortly thereafter.

The Letters of Intent, as I mentioned, are required to be submitted in order to submit a Concept Paper and a Full Application, you must comply with the requirements listed in section 4 dot Charlie of the Funding Opportunity. You need to log into the Program Information Center by January 11th and create a submission. That will be your Letter of Intent. Please do not provide any proprietary or sensitive business information as part of this Letter of Intent and we will not notify you of any eligibility or any sort of feedback from these Letters of Intent. This these are used as an accounting purpose for us so that we can set up for our Concept Paper reviews. So we need some limited information from you. We're not We're not gonna evaluate your proposal based on your Letter of Intent. We're looking for what consequences will be received.

So, Concept Papers: All applicants must submit a Concept Paper. And each Concept Paper is limited to a single concept or technology. So please do not discuss multiple ideas within a Concept Paper. Section 4 dot Delta will inform you on what all the page limits and information that needs to be included in the Concept Paper. Failure to include the required content could result in receiving a "discouraged" determination if we find that the Concept Paper is ineligible. So those are, again, due on January 25th by 5 p.m. We will provide you with an "encouraged" or "discouraged" notification as well as comments on the strengths and weaknesses of the Concept Paper to encourage you to move on to writing a Full Application or discourage you from putting one together.

Our evaluation criteria for these Concept Papers is based on one review criteria, which is the overall responsiveness to the Funding Opportunity topic that you've applied to. So how well are you clearly describing your proposed technology and how unique and will advance the current state of the art? We're also looking for you to identify the high level risks and challenges a swell as some of your mitigation strategies as part of your concept. And information on the qualification and experience and capabilities of the proposed project team. We're looking for work that will, if successfully accomplished, would clearly meet the objectives stated in the FOA.

[Unintelligible] a Full Applications after you receive your feedback from your Concept Papers. You should be working on your Full Applications. Here's a short list of the majority of the pieces that are required as part of the Full Application. The focus will be on the technical volume, which will provide us with technical content and who the team members are and such. You also need to provide us with the SF, the standard form, 424 which is an Application for Federal Assistance. As well as the 424A, which is a Budget and Justification Workbook to show the cost breakdown of the proposed project. There's also some short summary that required for public release, a Summary Slide for us to use for review. And there's several administrative documents which are applicable across different topics. So please review the Funding Opportunity information to ensure that you're supplying all the documents that are required for the topic you're applying.

So moving on to the technical content. Technical Volume Content for Topic Area 1, which is the Grid-Forming Technology Research Consortium. There's a 30 page limit for the submission on that. All the other topics have a 15 page limit. So we allow you to use that page limit however you see fit. We do, however, suggests that you submit a cover page. To spend about 10% of that volume discussing the general overview of your project. Another 30% of that on the Technical Description and how the Innovation and Impact of your technology will be evaluated. 40% on the Workplan and how will you accomplish the research entailed in this. And 20% on the qualifications of the team as well as the resources available to you.

So those Full Applications are due on March 29th of 2021. Full Applications are eligible for review as long as you're an eligible entity, which I'll go over in the next slide. You've submitted an eligible Concept Paper. We tend to get a question about this as well. You are allowed to submit if you are discouraged. However, if you are discouraged it's the view of the office and the reviewers that it is unlikely that your Full Application will succeed through review. You need to show that you'll be meeting the Cost Share requirements that are prescribed for your Topic Area, as well as following the compliance requirement that are listed in section III.C. So you also need to be responsive to the topic which will be discussed this part of your Concept Paper and any other eligibility requirements which are listed in Section III of the Funding Opportunity.

So who's eligible to apply? Eligible applicants for this Funding Opportunity are all US citizens and US permanent residents; for profit entities - as I mentioned earlier incorporated in the United States; educational institutions; nonprofits; state, local and tribal government entities; as well as our Federally Funded Research and Development Centers, often FFRDCs. In our topics 3a and 3b, as mentioned earlier, the Prime Recipient for those proposals must be a for profit business. You can team up with other nonprofits or educational institutions or Federally Funded Research and Development Centers. But the bulk of the work - 51% or more - of the project based on project costs must be performed by the Prime Recipients. So that for profit entity.

Okay. In terms of multiple applications for all of the topics in this Funding Opportunity, you may submit more than one Concept Paper and Full Application to the Funding Opportunity, but they do need to be unique and distinct projects that are listed in your Concept Paper and Full Application. So please do not submit multiple Concept Papers with essentially the same idea. They need to be unique and distinctive projects to submit multiple application.

As for the Merit Review process, I went over the review criteria for the Concept Paper, but there is a couple different phases for the Full Applications. So these applications will be reviewed by external subject matter experts that are recruited by this office. And it is ultimately up to this Selection Official to consider those recommendations from the reviewers as well consider any program policy factors to make their selection decisions. And I'll go over some of the program policy factors in following slides.

So review Criterion 1: The Innovation and Impact of this project that is 40% of what we're reviewing is part of the Full Application process. So how is this project differentiated from the state of the art? How impactful will it be upon the broader industry? And what is the scale of the project that's proposed and how will it be utilized after the project is completed? This is for Topic Area 1 and Topic Area 3. So we're also looking for how the project will disseminate its information from data and software code deliverables, if applicable.

Criterion 2: Quality and Likely of the Completion of the Stated Goals. So this is focused on looking at the workplan that is provided in the technical volume. What types of milestones like and goals are provided as part of your proposal. Are they SMART? Which is Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Timely. And how well are you incorporating reasonable assumptions for the execution of your project. For Topic Area 1, we're also gonna be evaluating the operational plan on how the consortium will support a coherent, systems oriented approach for the research and development activities as well as managing partnerships between other [unintelligible] research, other nonprofit research institutions, utilities and for profit vendors and, OEM provided.

The remaining criteria for Topic Area 1 and Topic Area 3. Criterion 3 is the capability of of the team, 20% of what the review is. So how well qualified is the team and what resources are available to them? Are they able to demonstrate an ability to complete the proposed project that was submitted.

For Topic Area 1, we'll also be reviewing how the Consortium director and management team, how they demonstrated strong leadership and stakeholder engagement from their past experiences in bringing together large consortiums of personnel and tackling large research projects.

Criterion 4 is focused on the contribution to utilizing US manufacturing. So how well does the project and likelihood of providing long term manufacturing and employment within the United States based on the commercializing the technologies that are produced as part of these projects?

Topic Area 2 has some very similar criterion, but the waiting is a little bit different. So Criterion 1, which is the Innovation and Impact section, the same type of output that we're looking for. It will be rated at 50% for Topic Area 2. As well as Criterion 2 is also the same review criteria as in Topic Area 1 and 3 will be looking at the Likelihood of Accomplishing the Stated Goals and the milestones and the Go/no go decision point their proposed at 30%.

And then Criterion 3, which is similar to Topic Area 1 and 3 looking at the capability, and the resources available to the project team that will be weighted at 20%.

So after that review period, you will receive Reviewer Comments on the strengths and weaknesses based on those review criteria. You are not required to submit a Reply to those comments, but we do recommend. It gives you a chance to address what you may perceive as misgivings or if the reviewers missed something within your application. You will be given the opportunity to reply to them by April 28th, 2021 at 5 p.m. We will ensure that you have at least three business days to formulate your answers and provide us with two pages of text to address any of those comments as well as an additional one page which you can use to provide data or graphs or uses text as you see fit.

We are reserving the right to hold Pre-Selection interviews as part of this process. So we may invite one or more applicants to participate in these Pre-Selection interviews. If you're selected for an interview, it does not signify that you will be selected for an award or that you will not be selected for award. It just allows the Solar Energy Technology Office to gather additional information about your proposal. We do not, however, reimburse any travel funds or other related expenses to performing these Pre-Selection interviews. Nor will those costs be eligible for reimbursement at the pre-award cost if you are selected for an award.

So in terms of selection factors, as I mentioned before the Selection Official will consider the merit review, the reviewer recommendations, as well as looking at program policy factors and the amount of funds that are available, and for each one of these Topic Areas that's part of this Funding Opportunity.

There are a number of program policy factors listed here as well. All these program policy factors are listed within the Funding Opportunity, but some of them include how the project, including this cost share, will optimize the use of available funding. We're looking at the level of industry involvement of the team members, as well as reaching out the potential stakeholders. There's, how well the projects are working in desired geographic distribution areas; looking at the commitments that are detailed within US Manufacturing Plan if applicable. As well as how that project will potentially improve the resilience of critical infrastructure.

Several other ones focused on diversity on how well the project team exhibits diversity within their members. A swell as including, but not limited to, the inclusion of Historically Black Colleges and Universities or other minority institutions, as well as members within Qualified Opportunity Zones. We also need to ensure that the funding is optimized, avoiding any duplication or overlap with other, either publicly or privately, funded work with DOE or outside of DOE. How the proposed project will enable new and expanded market segments. And the degree to which the project promotes coordination with nongovernmental entities to demonstrate the proposed technology and facilitate technology transfer to commercialize the research that was provided.

As far as Registration Requirements. In order to submit into EPIC you will need to log in and create an account on our EPIC web. We do recommend that you start the process at least 24 hours before the submission deadline so that you can obtain a Control Number and understand how the system works. It's not required as part of the application, but you will need to have what's known as a DUNS Number, SAM Number, as well a federal FedConnect account and a Grants.gov account. So you need to register within all of those if you are going to receive an award in this FOA. So it's important to register in those systems as you're going through the application process if you have not done so already.

And as I've mentioned before, we are utilizing a new system this year in the EPIC web for collecting all of the Letters of Intent and Concept Papers and Full Application. So please visit the website as soon you can to create an account. And within the Helo Center, there's a large number of training materials which will guide you through how to submit Letters of Intent, Full Applications, how tow obtain feedback. So please take a look through all the training materials available. See within the Help Center to help guide you through the process.

So just some key points to remember. As part of this as I mentioned, we strongly encourage you to submit before the deadline to ensure that you don't encounter any technical glitches with uploading any of your information into the system. There are always a large number of people that try to submit right at the deadline, and it may clog the system and prevent you from submitting by that 5 PM deadline. We also recommend that any time you make a submission, please print out the confirmation page as part of that, which will have your Control Number so that if there are any issues with the timing or deadlines of your submission, you'll have documentation to back up when you submitted everything. And we will also deemed submissions ineligible if their entries are incorrect.

So as far as points-of-contact, it's extremely important to designate a Technical and a Business point-of-contact within the Program Information Center. We will be communicating through those two points-of-contact with all of our... and any questions we may have as part of setting up interviews as well as providing you updates with when any of the selection or reviewer comments are available for review. So please ensure that your responsive during any of the negotiation deadlines. So failure to be responsive to our emails may result in recission of our decision of Selection and canceling of any further negotiations.

So with that, I want to thank you all for joining us today. If you have any questions - I saw that there were several questions submitted to the chat function, we will be taking those questions and submitting the answers into the Q&A section of our FOA on EPIC. If you have any additional questions, please click the "Submit Announcement-Specific Questions to EERE" button that's in the operate hand corner of our Funding Opportunity on EPIC. And if you have any issues with logging into the system, please submit those to the EPIC help desk. They can help you with any technical issues you may have with logging into the system or submitting documents. Our Announcement-Specific Questions are really focused on questions around the topics in the Funding Opportunity or submission questions, not the technical information about how to upload your document into the Program Information Center. And as always, please include what the FOA name and number is in the subject line of your emails. And if you have a Control Number already, please include that Control Number as well.

And with that, I wanna thank you very much for attending. We'll be placing the recorded webinar on the EPIC page soon after completion of this and I wish you all a very happy New Year and a great rest of your day.