Summer’s officially here, and with it, the solar market is staying hot. There are plenty of new projects and more money flowing back into the industry. There’s also a new sweepstakes intended to help people go solar.

SunPower’s Solar Discovery Game is a sweepstakes with the grand prize of a $25,000 photovoltaic array. It’s certainly not the most important piece of solar news out there, but it’s pretty exciting for homeowners interested in going solar. People can sign up for the sweepstakes via SunPower’s Facebook page. Participants are automatically entered into its weekly drawings, but the sweepstake’s grand prize winner will be the person that gets the most points by answering a series of weekly solar trivia questions right.

In larger news for the industry, CleanPath, LLC, announced it will invest up to $800 million in solar projects over the next five years through revolving loan funds. The company and its investors plan to support more than 1 gigawatt of new projects. The fund is an early indicator that a solar equity market could arise again. Following the economic meltdown of 2008, the once-growing market disappeared, meaning that private equity investment in utility-scale solar projects all but dried up.

Still, the federal government’s loan guarantees and other programs remain essential to supporting more solar adoption. Last week, a consortium of companies—Bank of America Merrill Lynch, NRG Energy and Prologis—announced Project Amp, a bid to put 733 megawatts of photovoltaics on Prologis warehouse rooftops across 28 states in the U.S. The project wouldn’t have been possible without a $1.4 billion conditional loan guarantee commitment from the Department of Energy, the companies said.

Training programs, like You Save Green’s program, are important to making sure that solar installers can keep pace with demand. The company is working with City University of New York and with adults who participate in Nassau County’s green-job subsidized employment program to help train installers in the field.

Even in places where fossil fuels dominate the local economy, solar power is making inroads. For instance, Rifle, Colo., home to natural gas and oil shale extractions, last week unveiled a new community solar array, and the town now has nearly 3 megawatts of solar power in operation.

Camp Pendleton in Southern California, a Marine Corps base, unveiled a 936-kilowatt carport solar array installed by Independent Energy Solutions. It’s part of a larger Department of Defense effort to generate 100 percent of its power needs onsite using clean and renewable energy sources.

1600 Pennsylvania Ave., in Washington, D.C., aka the White House, hasn’t lived up to its plans to install solar by the start of summer. The Department of Energy said it is still in a competitive procurement process. But 350.org, which led the Put Solar Back on the White House campaign, said that the Obama Administration’s efforts were somewhat lackluster.

In lighter news, Samsung is bringing what is likely the first solar-powered netbook to market in the U.S. The device is capable of charging its batteries on sunlight, and the manufacturer said with eight hours of sunlight, it can operate for up to 18 hours a day. It will be available in the U.S. on July 3.

Image courtesy of NREL.