Workforce innovations headline American-Made Solar Prize contenders

The United States continues to tighten its energy borders with a barrage of new tariffs, which puts the onus on American-made renewable energy industries to deliver more product and innovation. The Department of Energy’s American-Made Solar Prize Contest is often the starting point for such innovations. In January, 20 new innovators were named semifinalists in Round 8 of the Solar Prize contest, each winning $50,000, new connections, and entry to the second phase of the contest.
Each round of the Solar Prize consists of three contests—Ready!, Set!, and Go!—with increasing levels of financial support awarded at each phase. These announcements came in the “Set!” contest.
We have details on each semifinalist below, across categories of Dual-Use, Finance and Business Models, Photovoltaics, Systems Integration, and Deployment and Workforce — which stood out the most to us. Let’s take a look.
Deployment and Workforce
Cosmic Robotics (San Francisco, California) – This team is developing robots to pick up and place solar modules on single-axis solar trackers, automating a dangerous and laborious task in the installation process. Through this innovation, a network of robots could work alongside human crews to accelerate the deployment of utility-scale solar.
IWNL Energy (Orlando, Florida) – This team is developing a multilingual, comprehensive, user-centered software platform called the Solar Energy Career Navigator. This platform aims to reduce barriers to entry and bridge the gap between potential workers and employers, guiding them toward fulfilling careers in the solar energy sector. JEDI Winner.
PowerTechs (Austin, Texas) – This team is developing a reskilling and skills assessment platform for the renewable energy workforce that combines artificial intelligence and extended reality. This solution will help address the solar workforce shortage and accelerate deployment of solar energy.
Samtracs (San Antonio, Texas) – This team is automating solar farm construction through on-site, mobile construction equipment combined with redesigned single-axis tracker components. This new assembly process and tracker design will reduce labor requirements for solar farm construction and decrease construction time.
Solar Tech Collective (Tucson, Arizona) – This team is developing a mobile-based training app, SolTrain, for solar installation field technicians. The app will provide microlessons focused on essential field skills and will validate technician competency to lower operational costs for solar asset owners.
Dual-Use PV
Fundusol LLC (Stanford, California) – This team is developing a modeling software to design and optimize agrivoltaics systems by modeling multiple factors to predict the performance of the agrivoltaic system on each farm’s crop and/or livestock. This solution will help accelerate the deployment of solar in agricultural environments.
Icarus (San Diego County, California) – This team is developing a solution that integrates photovoltaics (PV) and solar thermal technologies by capturing and converting waste heat to create a hybrid PV and thermal cogeneration system. This solution will improve the power performance of commercial PV arrays and generate hot water that can be stored for on-demand energy needs. We recently covered a similar product and DOE prize winner here.
Serida Inc. (Ithaca, New York) – This team is developing an agrivoltaics deployment software to enable solar developers to design agrivoltaic systems through advanced microclimate modeling and crop algorithms. This solution will help empower rural communities to go solar by maximizing the community benefits of agrivoltaics.
Watts on Water (San Diego, California) – This team is developing an automated, geographic information system-based solar siting and design software tailored to floating photovoltaics (FPV) systems. Through FPV-specific design parameters and cobenefits analysis, this solution will support the deployment of FPV through streamlining tools such as siting and design and customer acquisition.
Finance and Business Models
Eighth Generation Consulting (Osage County, Oklahoma) – This team is developing a solar asset management software using artificial intelligence, computer vision, geographic information systems, and permitting data to streamline how solar is permitted, serviced, and decommissioned. Through cradle-to-grave tracking, this solution will enable accurate and cost-effective management and decommissioning of solar assets. JEDI Winner.
Greengrid Inc. (Laconia, New Hampshire) – This team is developing a platform that finances solar rooftop projects in disadvantaged communities by leveraging corporate renewable energy certificate (REC) commitments. By bundling small-scale solar projects into large, high-impact REC portfolios, this solution reduces financial barriers to rooftop solar for underserved communities.
Rayva (Gilbert, Arizona) – This team is partnering with roofers and builders to install their building-integrated solar modules during the construction of new homes or roof replacements. This building-integrated solar module, combined with a streamlined business-to-business sales model, will reduce costs and expand the availability of solar to homeowners, including those in underserved communities. JEDI Winner.
TEAM CBA (Atlanta, Georgia) – This team is developing a tool to help communities and renewable energy project sponsors develop community benefit agreements. The tool assists with facilitating discovery and research, establishing key impact initiatives and success indicators, drafting and monitoring agreements, and tracking and reporting. JEDI Winner.
Photovoltaics (PV)
Full Charge Solar (Austin, Texas) – This team is developing a fully collapsible, cart-based solar array with a battery and inverter that requires little to no maintenance. This system provides electricity throughout the day while charging a battery to provide electricity at night and can serve emergency situations when power is not available.
Martin Solar (Mascoutah, Illinois) – This team is developing a new mounting system for residential solar that does not require drilling into homeowners’ roofs. This leak-proof mount will protect rooftops from damage and increase consumer confidence in rooftop solar. Learn more about this product here.
Plug & Play Solar Wing (Atlanta, Georgia) – This team is developing a quick-deploy, expandable solar PV array suitable for applications such as carports and disaster relief. This expandable design allows the Solar Wing to eliminate more than 95% of on-site installation activities, making it easy to relocate to new sites in the future.
Systems Integration
Expand Power Technologies Inc. (San Francisco, California) – This team is developing a novel inverter-based transformer that is smaller, safer, and smarter than traditional designs. This compact solution will expand access to solar in space-limited areas, such as urban environments, and reduce lead times by leveraging U.S.-based manufacturing capabilities.
Flip Energy (San Francisco, California) – This team is developing a turnkey platform to allow homeowners with solar and storage to more easily participate in virtual power plants, which can allow them to generate revenue from their solar-plus-storage systems. This solution will help make residential solar and storage more affordable and accessible for homeowners while also supporting grid reliability.
NetMeterGO.com (Las Vegas, Nevada) – This team is developing a platform that automates affordable net meter interconnection for small- and medium-sized utilities. This solution will equitably promote solar power through streamlined and automated interconnection queue management.
WattShift Inc. (Chicago, Illinois) – This team is developing a software platform for managing home energy devices, aligning demand with renewable energy availability. This management system dynamically optimizes energy use while reducing consumer costs and enabling more renewables on the grid.