Today, Assistant Secretary for the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy at the U.S. Department of Energy Daniel Simmons announced the two final winners of the Solar Prize Round 3: Maxout Renewables and Wattch Inc.
These teams were chosen for their impressive innovations that addressed critical solar energy challenges and have the potential to advance the industry. Each team won $500,000 in cash prizes and $75,000 in technical support vouchers. Their technologies include:
Maxout Renewables, Livermore, CA —This team developed the Evergrid, an appliance powered by a fly-wheel that can turn a residential solar installation into a microgrid that keeps delivering power during a grid outage while the sun is shining. The Evergrid also stabilizes the home microgrid by providing power balancing capacity when appliances like refrigerators cycle on and off.
Wattch Inc., Atlanta, GA — This team developed cost-effective hardware and combined it with secure, scalable software to make a solar monitoring platform to help commercial and industrial PV plants increase operational efficiency. The platform can provide predictive maintenance schedules to decrease downtime, has a universal dashboard that lets PV fleet owners and operators observe the performance of all their systems, improve remote and automated diagnostics, and better model a plant’s lifetime energy yield.
Congratulations to these two teams for winning the Solar Prize Round 3. We are eager to see your continued impact on solar and beyond!
