If you won, you probably know by now.
The Department of Energy has already selected recipients for $28 billion of the $32.7 billion in grant money allotted to the Department under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, according to Matt Rogers, the senior advisor to U.S. Secretary of Energy Stephen Chu. Rogers spoke at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley at the opening of the school's Energy Institute.
"Over 85 percent of the selections have been made," he said. At the end of September, $16.7 billion had already been awarded in total.
The DOE also received around $10 billion to facilitate credit for energy projects.
The ARRA has moved at a relatively quick speed, he noted. The program only passed this year. Until Memorial Day, most of the time was consumed in devising programs. $17.8 billion of the $28 billion has already been made available to recipients and the DOE has already got confirmation from recipients about how they employed their grants.
Although the DOE has had to work quick, it turned down around 80 percent of the applicants.
How will history judge the program? It's hard to say. On the plus side, the billions the DOE has awarded in grants and loans has prompted triple that amount to trickle in from the private sector. A $249 million grant to battery-maker A123 Systems helped usher in the successful IPO that raised $380 million for the company. The stock has zoomed in trading. The $3.3 billion in smart grid stimulus has lead to $4.7 billion in private funding.
Solyndra, the solar maker which landed the first DOE loan, has since raised more money and has been hiring people from the nearby Nuumi factory that General Motors and Toyota closed.
In the short term, the stimulus package will be judged by job creation. In the long term, it will be judged by how well the technologies and companies selected perform. And no one knows the answer to that last one yet.