This funding opportunity announcement (FOA) specifically targets soft cost reduction by increasing data accessibility, quality and interoperability in the U. S. The Solar Bankability Data to Advance Transactions and Access FOA (SB-DATA) will facilitate the growth and expansion of the solar industry by

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creating a standardized data landscape for distributed solar.

As the solar market continues to rapidly grow, it’s critical that the collection, management, and exchange of solar datasets, especially those that affect the bankability of solar assets – across the value chain from project origination to grid integration, operations, and decommissioning – are coordinated and streamlined to protect consumers, increase efficient pricing, and to support new and existing businesses entering the solar marketplace (e.g.

new financial, underwriting products, operations and maintenance services).

The goal of SB-DATA is to support the creation and adoption of industry-led de facto open data standards for rapid and seamless data exchange across the value chain from origination to decommissioning.

SunShot defines success of this program as the wide adoption of data standards by stakeholders representing at least 60% of the U. S. solar industry, in terms of deployed/managed residential and non-residential distributed solar assets in 201 5. This includes solar companies, developers, utilities, state governments, inverter manufactures, financial institutions, investors, underwriters, real estate entities, and others.