There is just one week left to pull together your application for the Energizing Rural Communities Prize! 

 

We encourage you to leverage office hours from the Power Connectors, the teaming platform to find any other partners to add to your application, and reach out to us on the forum with any last-minute questions. 

We know there's been some confusion around the definition of the phases, so for clarity, we are including language from the FAQ below to define the current phase vs. what you're submitting in your Phase One application: 

 

We are currently in Phase One, which ends on May 24th, 2023.

  • Phase Two begins once Phase One awards are announced. Exact dates TBA.
  • Phase Two then runs for one year and ends with a final submission. Exact dates TBA.
  • The prize concludes and Phase Two awards are announced. Exact dates TBA.

In Phase One you are proposing a plan. In Phase Two you are acting on that plan. At the end of Phase Two, teams that win $200k would then leverage their winnings to complete their clean energy demonstrations/implement their construction/finance projects.

Again, in your Phase One plans, your team should be addressing what activities you would pursue if you were to win the $100k Phase One award, however, some criterion also ask your team to think about what you would then pursue with the $200k Phase Two award (as it relates to future planning/goals). 

We encourage you to review the scoring criteria closely.

 

And finally, a primary goal of this prize is to build capacity for communities to access future sources of funding to make these projects sustainable. Here are a few opportunities, open now, that you may also want to consider as complementary to this prize: 

 

Good Luck!