{"id":6689,"date":"2017-05-12T17:23:22","date_gmt":"2017-05-12T17:23:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/?p=6689"},"modified":"2017-05-12T17:23:22","modified_gmt":"2017-05-12T17:23:22","slug":"teams-compete-to-bring-solar-power-to-low-income-texas-communities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/?p=6689","title":{"rendered":"Teams Compete to Bring Solar Power to Low-Income Texas Communities"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_6678\" style=\"width: 610px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/gr-57531-1-1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6678\" class=\"size-full wp-image-6678\" src=\"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/gr-57531-1-1.jpg\" alt=\"Five teams from Texas are competing for $1 million in prize money in a contest to develop solar access to under-served communities. Photo: Elenathewise\/GettyImages\" width=\"600\" height=\"401\" srcset=\"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/gr-57531-1-1.jpg 600w, https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/gr-57531-1-1-300x201.jpg 300w, https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/gr-57531-1-1-405x271.jpg 405w, https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/gr-57531-1-1-60x40.jpg 60w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-6678\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Five teams from Texas are competing for $1 million in prize money in a contest to develop solar access to under-served communities. Photo: Elenathewise\/GettyImages<\/p><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em><strong>by Mark Richardson<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p align=\"left\"><strong>DALLAS<\/strong> \u2013 A <a href=\"http:\/\/www.solarinyourcommunity.org\/\" target=\"parent\">national competition<\/a> is underway to expand solar electricity access to low-income communities. Forty-eight teams from 23 states and Washington, D.C., including five teams from Texas, have been selected to compete for $1 million in prize money.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s sponsored by the <a href=\"https:\/\/energy.gov\/eere\/sunshot\/solar-your-community-challenge-team-map\" target=\"parent\">U.S. Department of Energy\u2019s SunShot Initiative<\/a> and run by SUNY Polytechnic University, where Michael Fancher \u2013 executive director of SUNY Polytechnic\u2019s Center for Advanced Technology in Nano Materials and Nano Electronics \u2013 said to win, teams must develop a business plan that will work in under-served communities.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo that, long after the program, you have a vibrant community of these professionals able to continue and incorporate what they\u2019ve learned from each other,\u201d said Fancher, \u201cand replicating that in other low- and moderate-income communities.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Teams from Austin, Dallas, Floresville, Kerrville and Waco are participating in the contest and have been given seed money to put their projects together over the next 18 months. Winning entries must directly benefit low- and moderate-income households, local governments or nonprofits.<\/p>\n<p>According to Fancher, the idea is to match solar installers with agencies that want to make the move to renewable energy.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGetting the network activated, and then working with the not-for-profit community and the other participants in the low- and moderate-income communities, is really kind of the focus of this program,\u201d he said, \u201cand you can see that in the allocation of its funding.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s a grand prize of $500,000, with runners-up receiving awards of $100,000 and $200,000.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Mark Richardson DALLAS \u2013 A national competition is underway to expand solar electricity access to low-income communities. Forty-eight teams from 23 states and Washington, D.C., including five teams from Texas, have been selected to compete for $1 million in prize money. It\u2019s sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy\u2019s SunShot Initiative and run by [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":6678,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-state"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6689"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6689\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6690,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6689\/revisions\/6690"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}