| The Energy Department on May 19 announced $7 million in awards for six projects to develop lightweight, compact, and lower cost advanced hydrogen storage systems that will enable longer driving ranges and help make fuel cell systems competitive for different platforms and sizes of vehicles. These advances in hydrogen storage will be critical to the widespread commercialization of hydrogen and fuel cell technologies. For example, Sandia National Laboratories of Livermore, California, will receive $1.2 million to systematically screen low-cost alternative materials for use in hydrogen storage systems, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory of Livermore, California, will receive $1.2 million to develop a reversible, high-capacity storage material that can bond to and release hydrogen in a vehicle, reducing the amount of hydrogen that needs to be pumped in the tank. See the Energy Department's news release and the Energy Department's Hydrogen and Fuel Cells webpage.   The Energy Department on May 20 announced the SunShot Catalyst, a new prize competition to spur the rapid creation and development of products and solutions that address near-term challenges in the U.S. solar marketplace. Intended to tackle market barriers and address technical problems that can be solved through automation, algorithms, data, and software, SunShot Catalyst will leverage the reach and power of online crowdsourcing to generate ideas, spur business innovations, and develop prototypes. The competition will also enable U.S. entrepreneurs to launch cutting-edge solar companies that can address some of the most relevant and time-sensitive market challenges by encouraging teams to engage and forge partnerships across the nation’s growing networks of technology mentors, incubators, and accelerators. The new prize competition was announced at the SunShot Summit, which takes place on May 20 to 22 in Anaheim, California. The summit brings together more than 800 solar energy leaders from across industry, academia, the policymaking community, and the Department’s national laboratories to highlight the recent strides made by the solar industry to significantly reduce costs and deploy solar energy nationwide. The summit will also help illuminate the paths forward to meeting the ambitious SunShot Initiative affordability goal of cost-competitive utility-scale solar energy by 2020, while promoting growth in the solar market and strengthening America’s energy security. See the Energy Department news release and the SunShot Catalyst website. The Energy Department and the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) on May 15 announced the national champions of America’s Home Energy Education Challenge (AHEEC), a student competition created to help families save money by saving energy. The sixth grade class from South Ripley Elementary School in Versailles, Indiana, and sixth and seventh grade students from Villa Maria School in Stamford, Connecticut, were together declared the national champions for their efforts, which reduced household energy usage, encouraged school-wide involvement and collaboration to save energy, and engaged their local community. The AHEEC competition, which is administered by NSTA, challenged teams of third through eighth grade students to work with their science teachers and local utility companies to develop energy savings plans that would reduce the amount of energy used to power their homes and schools. Each student team monitored and measured their energy consumption over a three month period between September 2013 and February 2014, and compared it to data from the same period the year before. The winners were chosen from a select group of finalists and were judged on several criteria, including energy and cost savings, overall quality and presentation of the team narrative, focus on behavioral changes, and creativity of local school involvement. As national champions, each school will receive $10,000. See the Energy Department news release. The U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) on May 7 announced the approval of the 200-megawatt Moapa Solar Energy Center Project on tribal trust land in Nevada. The Moapa solar project will be the second utility-scale solar project approved for development on tribal trust lands, and is one of the many steps the administration has taken to help strengthen tribal communities. The Record of Decision for the Moapa Band of Paiute Indians’ project approves the construction, operation and maintenance of a photovoltaic solar power generation facility on an 850-acre site on the Moapa River Indian Reservation, which is located about 20 miles northeast of Las Vegas, Nevada. The facility is expected to generate enough power to run approximately 60,000 homes and will support up to 500 jobs at peak construction and 10 permanent positions. The project is also the 52nd utility-scale renewable energy project that DOI has approved since 2009 as part of a Department-wide effort to advance smart development of renewable energy on our nation’s public lands. Together, the wind, solar and geothermal projects could support more than 20,000 construction and operations jobs and generate about 14,000 megawatts of power to communities across the West, or enough to power nearly 4.8 million homes. DOI also announced that nine federally recognized tribes have been awarded Tribal Energy Development Capacity grants totaling more than $700,000 apiece. The competitive grants fund projects that help build tribal capacity for energy and mineral resource development, including renewable energy projects. See the Energy Department news release. | 
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