DOE is supporting the development of tools and approaches that will reduce balance of system non-hardware costs for solar energy systems. These soft costs—expenses associated with permitting, financing, interconnection, and inspection—can account for approximately half of the total expense of photovoltaic installations.

As part of the SunShot Incubator program, this funding opportunity is designed to help small businesses and entrepreneurs develop data-driven tools, innovative programs, and streamlined processes that will make solar more accessible for Americans. This solicitation builds on the Incubator program's proven success with photovoltaic technologies to begin targeting market barriers. By addressing all sectors of the solar energy economy, the SunShot Initiative works to reduce the total installed cost of photovoltaic systems.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) seeks to fund revolutionary applied scientific research that develops highly disruptive Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) technologies that will meet 6 cents per kWh cost target by the end of the decade. This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) for SunShot Concentrating Solar Power Research and Development intends to support research into technologies that have the potential for much higher efficiency, lower cost, and/or more reliable performance than existing commercial and near-commercial CSP systems and their expected incremental progress in future years.

As part of the SunShot Initiative, this applied research program is intended to demonstrate and prove new concepts in the collector, receiver, and power cycle subsystems, including associated hardware and manufacturing processes. These developments should lead to subsequent system integration, engineering scale-up, and eventual commercial production for electricity generation applications. The SunShot CSP program is designed to look beyond incremental near-term innovation and explore transformative concepts with the potential to break through performance barriers as known today, such as efficiency and temperature limitations. These goals support the mission of the DOE SunShot Initiative.

There are four topics to which an application may be submitted under this FOA:

• Topic 1: Advanced Collectors
• Topic 2: Advanced Receivers
• Topic 3: Advanced Power Cycles
• Topic 4: Seedling CSP Concepts