This FOA will fund research in three (3) Topics Areas that develop technologies to address emerging challenges and enhance the benefits of variable renewable energy sources (VRE), inverter-based resources (IBR), and distributed energy resources (DER), in utility long-term planning activities and the daily operation of the grid. The new state-of-the-art planning and operations tools developed under this FOA will enable solar energy to be more optimally utilized over time and allow it to be utilized in place of traditional generation, providing Americans with more cheap and secure sources of clean energy.

• Topic Area 1: System Planning Tools for Future Power Systems
• Topic Area 2: Variability Management in Grid Operations
• Topic Area 3: Rapid System Health and Risk Assessment Tools for Grid Operators

The American-Made Sunny Awards for Equitable Community Solar (The Sunny Awards) is a $200,000 prize competition that will recognize community solar portfolios and programs that employ or develop best practices to increase equitable access to the meaningful benefits of community solar for subscribers and their communities. Community solar is any solar project or purchasing program in which the benefits of a solar project flow to multiple customers such as individuals, businesses, nonprofits, and other groups, within a certain geographic area.

Clean Energy to Communities (C2C) offers peer-learning cohorts to advance local clean energy goals. Cohorts are funded by the U.S. Department of Energy and managed by NREL with support from the World Resources Institute. Peer-learning cohorts are multi-community engagements that convene regularly for approximately 6 months to exchange strategies and best practices, learn in a collaborative environment, and workshop policy or program proposals, action plans, or strategies to overcome challenges around a common clean energy transition topic.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Solar Energy Technologies Office (SETO) announced the Small Innovative Projects in Solar (SIPS) 2023 funding opportunity. This funding opportunity will award $6.5 million for seedling R&D projects that focus on innovative and novel ideas in photovoltaics (PV) and concentrating solar-thermal power (CSP) and are riskier than research ideas based on established technologies.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is releasing this Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) to solicit applications in accordance with the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act. This FOA represents a more than $6 billion opportunity to catalyze high-impact, large-scale, transformational advanced industrial facilities to significantly reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in energy-intensive industrial subsectors. DOE expects to award up to approximately 65 projects in high GHG-emitting industries and for cross-cutting technologies.

The Fermi Award is bestowed by the President of the United States to an individual or individuals of international stature in recognition of exceptional scientific, technical, policy, and/or management achievements related to the broad missions of the U.S. Department of Energy and its programs. Established in 1956 by President Eisenhower and the Atomic Energy Commission, the Fermi Award is given to inspire people of all ages, through the examples of Enrico Fermi, the 1938 Nobel Laureate in physics, and the Fermi Award laureates who followed in his footsteps, to explore and open new scientific and technological realms. The Fermi Award is administered on behalf of the White House by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science. A Fermi Award laureate receives:

A citation signed by the President of the United States and the Secretary of Energy;
A gold-plated medal bearing the likeness of Enrico Fermi; and
A $100,000 honorarium (if there is more than one laureate named, the honorarium is shared equally).

The INCITE program promotes transformational advances in science and technology for compute and/or data-intensive large-scale research projects such as scientific modeling, simulation, and data analytics and Artificial Intelligence (AI) campaigns. INCITE projects are awarded large allocations of computer time and supporting resources at the Argonne and Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (LCF) centers, operated by the US Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science. INCITE seeks research challenges requiring capability computing from diverse areas: production simulations, compute intensive machine or deep learning applications, or large-scale data analysis that use a large fraction of the LCF systems and cannot be performed on less capable resources. INCITE supports high-impact simulation, data and AI approaches which require the unique architectural infrastructure, high performance storage and networking capabilities available at the LCF centers.

The Department of Energy (DOE), Office of Nuclear Energy (NE), conducts consistent interactions with Tribes who are members of the Nuclear Energy Tribal Working Group (NETWG). The purpose of this Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) is to fund a cooperative agreement that engages tribal government leaders and representatives on issues and activities involving the topics for which NE has responsibility such as advanced reactors, siting an interim storage and/or disposal facility for spent nuclear fuel and high level radioactive waste, transportation of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste, cultural resource management, STEM education, environmental justice, etc.

DOE’s Building America Program leverages cutting-edge building science research to develop the solutions and best practices needed to advance energy efficiency in homes. Multi-disciplinary teams will bring together expertise in community engagement, retrofit demonstration, research, implementation, and industry to address the hard-to-solve technical challenges of decarbonizing the existing U.S. residential housing stock. Teams will work with communities to conduct collaborative research and demonstration projects in real-world homes, with the aim of accelerating local deployment of highly energy efficient, durable, healthy home upgrades.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Clean Energy Innovator Fellowship program funds recent graduates and energy professionals to support critical energy organizations to advance clean energy solutions that will help decarbonize the power system, electrify transportation and industry, and make the U.S. power system more resilient, equitable and inclusive. The program recruits candidates from diverse backgrounds to spend up to two years at eligible host institutions.

Prospective Host Institutions should apply to be considered for the program by April 27, 2023. Applications for Innovator Fellows open on May 22 and are due by June 8.

The DOE SC program in High Energy Physics (HEP) hereby announces its interest in receiving applications for the DOE Traineeship in Accelerator Science & Engineering, which will provide support to train the next generation of scientists and engineers in this field. Up to 4 grants may be awarded to provide funding to universities or teams of universities to support tuition, stipend, and travel costs for students enrolled in specific accelerator science and engineering degree programs, and to provide modest support for topic-specific curriculum development and program administration. Award terms are expected to be up to five years, with the possibility of renewal for a second term. This program does not support dedicated accelerator research and development efforts; such efforts are supported through the HEP General Accelerator R&D (GARD) program, through accelerator R&D programs elsewhere in DOE, and by other federal agencies.

The Office of Science (SC) hereby announces its interest in applications to advance basic research in support of the Department of Energy’s Energy Earthshots™ initiative. This FOA is a collaborative effort across three SC research programs: Advanced Scientific Computing Research, Basic Energy Sciences, and Biological and Environmental Research. This FOA will support small teams to build the scientific foundations for the Energy Earthshots:

• Hydrogen Shot
• Long Duration Storage Shot
• Carbon Negative Shot
• Enhanced Geothermal Shot
• Floating Offshore Wind Shot
• Industrial Heat Shot