The second cycle of the Catalyst Prize Program is moving forward. The Business Innovation contest — designed to help teams form and explore software solutions to the most compelling problems facing building energy efficiency — is complete and finalists have been selected for the next competition phase, the Prototyping contest.

The buildings finalists are Building DataCloud, Livable Analytics, BuiltSpectrum Inc., Kinetic Buildings, and One Oak Systems. These teams will represent the first Prototyping cohort for BTO, which teamed up with the SunShot Initiative on Catalyst last June.

SunShot has also made its own selection of finalists seeking to solve the most compelling challenges facing the solar energy market. The solar finalists are SunSwarm, Tangerine+, SolarBook, Solar Action Network, MapMySolar, Energy Equity, Solar Merchant, YouSaveWithSolar.com, Hot 4 Solar, Solar Doctor, Solar Land Solutions LLC, MySunBuddy, RE-volv, and Bright Harvest Solar.

Between September 28 and November 30, the 19 finalist teams will use the TopCoder service to build out Minimum Viable Products (MVPs) that on the buildings side offer solutions for more energy-efficient, comfortable building design and operation, and on the solar side address barriers to greater solar energy deployment. The Prototyping contest will end with Demo Day in mid-December, where all finalists will publicly demonstrate their MVPs before a panel of investors, judges, and their peers. Based on their performances, the Department will award up to $500,000 in additional funds to advance these early-stage solutions toward commercialization.