Dept of Energy SunShot Catalyst webinar on Thursday, Apr 30, 2015

The Dept of Energy's SunShot Catalyst - catalyst.energy.gov - is a semi-annual $1M challenge prize designed to introduce developers, designers, & entrepreneurs to funding & career opportunities in the Solar sector.

To answer any questions, Michael Contreras of the Catalyst team will be holding a Webinar on Thursday, Apr 30, at 2:00 PM (EDT). That’s 10:00 AM PDT for West Coast folks. Please follow this GoToMeeting link - bit.ly/1Exe7Sz

*** UPCOMING EVENTS ***

Round #1 of Catalyst teams are competing for five $100K cash prizes on Demo Day (May 14, 2015) at Galvanize SOMA in San Francisco. You can register for tickets (free) at catalyst.energy.gov

Application deadline for Round #2 is in June and the actual date will be announced during Round #1 Demo Day.

*** BACKGROUND INFO ***

Because of the rapid decline of photovoltaic prices in the past few years, the total percentage of "Soft Costs" (cost of everything except the hardware) in a solar installation is now about 2/3 of the total cost.

* In comparison, Germany's "soft costs" is half of ours.

* Examples of such "soft costs" include: customer acquisition, permitting, financing, work flow inefficiencies, etc.

* Currently, "soft costs" is the low-hanging fruit to crush with innovative use of software, open data, and Big Data analysis.

* The Catalyst Topics - bit.ly/solar-topics-2015 - were crowdsourced from industry and policy leaders to address "soft costs". A number of these topics have a SunShot "thumbs up" logo - 1.usa.gov/1OZpQuB - identifying them as particularly important to the SunShot Initiative.

* Catalyst is a semi-annual challenge prize from SunShot specifically designed to foster "soft cost" crushing innovation. Catalyst features:

1. Super simple application process - online video pitch plus online résumé.
2. $25K worth of software development or hardware prototyping services to bring ideas to life.
3. Five $100K cash prizes.