The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Solar Energy Technologies Office (SETO) is funding the American-Made Solar Data Bounty Prize, a two-stage, $1.4 million prize designed to increase the accessibility of high-quality time series datasets for photovoltaic (PV) systems. These types of datasets can be used to build, train, and optimize models designed for PV system simulation, which can in turn provide more accurate performance estimates and better system designs. Improving the accuracy of PV system modeling lowers the risk of developing and operating those assets, which can attract more capital for the deployment of PV power plants.

The Solar Data Bounty Prize shares a common goal with the PV Fleet Performance Data Initiative, incentivizing PV system owners to share their datasets so researchers can continue to develop and fine-tune modeling tools for solar applications.

The Prize invites owners of PV systems to submit at least five years of historical time series data at a minimum of 15-minute time resolution for one or two of their systems. On September 29, 2023, SETO announced the seven datasets that won Stage 1 of the Solar Data Bounty Prize, each receiving $5,000 and advancing to Stage 2 of the prize program. On January 9, 2024, SETO announced the five datasets that won the second and final stage of the prize. Two competitors were awarded grand prizes and three were awarded runner-up prizes. The grand prize winner for large PV systems won $130,000 while the winner for medium-size system won $80,000. Runner-up prizes were $30,000 each for medium systems and $50,000 for large systems.

These datasets are available from the Open Energy Data Initiative (OEDI), a centralized repository of energy research data aggregated from DOE’s Programs, Offices, and National Laboratories. Register for NREL and SETO’s three-part Virtual Tutorial series in March about open-source tools and open-access solar data.