The oft repeated engineer's mantra of "quality, price, schedule: Pick 2." The contest has picked quality (the engineering requirements are not easy to hit) and

The oft repeated engineer's mantra of "quality, price, schedule: Pick 2." The contest has picked quality (the engineering requirements are not easy to hit) and schedule (there's a timeline for demoing). I bet it's expected that the cost, even if it's high right now, will only come down over time. But since there exist 0 inverters which can do this today (presumably), cost isn't a big concern if you can do something new and novel that's never been done before.