American-Made Challenges (SETO)

American-Made PRIME Prize

Funds U.S. solar manufacturers and innovators registering photovoltaic modules and inverters with the EPEAT ecolabel through a prize competition.

The American-Made PRIME (Promoting Registration of Inverters and Modules with Ecolabel) Prize is a $2.7 million prize competition run by the U.S. Department of Energy's Solar Energy Technologies Office (DOE SETO) under the American-Made Challenges program. American-Made Challenges is DOE's prize framework designed to push U.S. entrepreneurs to advance ideas from early concept to manufacturing scale, supported by the American-Made Network of labs, incubators, and industry partners.

The total competition prize pool is $2.7 million, announced in October 2024. The competition is designed to increase the number of solar PV modules and inverters that carry the EPEAT ecolabel — a third-party environmental certification for electronic products. Specific per-stage award amounts, payment schedule, and cost-share requirements are not stated in the available source material.

Eligibility is open to a range of applicants including for-profit companies, nonprofits, universities, and individuals based in the United States. Detailed applicant requirements, team size limits, revenue thresholds, and registration requirements are not specified in the available source material and should be confirmed on the official competition page.

No application deadlines are published in the available source material. Applicants should monitor the DOE SETO prizes page and the HeroX or challenge.gov platform (typical for American-Made Challenges) for current phase deadlines and submission instructions. Competitions in the American-Made Challenges series run in multiple phases, with contestants advancing through design, development, and demonstration stages.

Key practical caveat: this page is the DOE SETO program overview, not the live competition portal. Award amounts given ($2.7 million) refer to the total prize pool across all phases and winners combined — not per-applicant amounts. Specific per-applicant maximums, phase structures, and judging criteria must be sourced from the dedicated PRIME Prize competition page.