The U.S. Department of Energy’s SunShot Prize, a national competition intended to reduce the time it takes to “go solar” across the country, has ended with the Connecticut Permit to Plug-in Challenge team as one of the two final participants. While neither team was eligible for the grand prize, both teams made impressive progress and were given an award of distinction for their efforts.

The SunShot competition began in September 2015 with five competing teams across the country and concluded in March 2017. During the competition, three teams – Northern and Central California SunShot Alliance, Sunrun and the Connecticut Permit to Plug-in Challenge – reached a major milestone in the competition and were each awarded $100,000 in seed prizes and received the designation of SunShot Prize Change Champion.

The Connecticut Permit to Plug-in Challenge team was comprised of the Connecticut Green Bank and the state’s investor-owned utilities, as well as solar installers and many municipalities.

According to the challenge’s criteria, to win the competition’s $3 million grand prize, teams needed to get a minimum of 2,250 points and complete 85 percent of its total installed capacity in 56 days or less. The Connecticut Permit to Plug-in Challenge team reported the installation of 1,501 systems in 49 participating municipalities covering 141 different ZIP codes. The systems that were installed averaged 8.74 kW, resulting in 13.03 MW of total installed solar capacity. The median total time from permit to plug-in was 89 days and 78.6 percent of its total installed capacity was completed in 56 days or less.

“While there was no winning team, it’s clear that the residents of Connecticut are the winners here,” Connecticut Green Bank President and CEO Bryan Garcia said in a statement. “Residents will continue to benefit from the lessons learned from the interaction between the utilities, solar contractors, municipalities and the Green Bank. We are proud to have been one of the final two teams striving towards such an important goal for the adoption of residential solar PV.”