SolShare – 2026 Australian Good Design Award of the Year and Good Design Award for Sustainability
- Published on: 13 October 2026
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For millions of people globally, the clean energy transition stopped at the door to their apartment building.
In Australia, those in apartment buildings traditionally remained locked out of solar savings even as rooftop solar reached world-leading levels on standalone homes. While rooftop solar uptake may not have been as widespread in other countries, the same barriers to accessing it existed for apartment residents. SolShare, an Australian-designed technology by Allume Energy, was created to change that equation.
SolShare has taken home two of Good Design Australia’s most significant 2026 honours: the Australian Good Design Award of the Year and the Good Design Award for Sustainability.
The system is the first one capable of connecting one shared rooftop solar installation to multiple individual apartments behind the metre, intelligently directing available solar power to where it is needed most. Residents keep their existing electricity meters and energy retailers while still getting the benefits of a shared rooftop system.
Now connecting more than 13,000 apartments across Australia and the UK, and delivering more than 28GWh of solar energy, SolShare demonstrates the extraordinary potential of design when environmental ambition is translated into something practical, accessible and built to last.
SolShare – 2026 Australian Good Design Award of the Year and Good Design Award for Sustainability. Image: Supplied
2026 Australian Good Design Award of the Year
THE AUSTRALIAN GOOD DESIGN AWARD OF THE YEAR IS HISTORICALLY AWARDED TO ONLY ONE EXEMPLARY PROJECT ACROSS ALL DESIGN DISCIPLINES AND CATEGORIES.
IT REPRESENTS THE VERY PEAK OF DESIGN EXCELLENCE AND INNOVATION.
SolShare tackles a problem hiding in plain sight: how do you give apartment residents the same access to rooftop solar as people living in standalone homes? It’s a challenge that has only become more acute. As more freestanding homes install solar, and now, thanks to government rebates, batteries, the benefits are undeniably positive, but they’re also widening a solar divide, with apartments unable to do the same.
Making the complicated feel simple
Stella Knorr, Chief Product Officer at Allume Energy, responsible for the design, development and delivery of SolShare 2, said the answer required looking beyond the technology itself.
“The problem was really simple to describe, but incredibly difficult to solve: people living in apartments were largely missing out on rooftop solar,” Stella explained.
“We saw an opportunity to remove that complexity and let residents keep their existing meter and electricity retailer while still receiving solar directly and even more efficiently from a shared rooftop system.”
SolShare – 2026 Australian Good Design Award of the Year and Good Design Award for Sustainability. Image: Supplied
One roof, many homes
SolShare is a 30kVA shared rooftop solar system capable of connecting up to 15 apartments, with configurable allocation logic that can respond to the requirements of different buildings.
“That direct connection and efficient use of a large shared solar system is really the key to making apartment solar practical, equitable and scalable.”
Designing the whole system
“The challenge was never just making the technology work once. It was making it repeatable across very different buildings, electrical configurations, installers and eventually different countries, regulations and grid environments.”
The product is therefore experienced as a complete system rather than a standalone piece of equipment.
A new category for solar
Perhaps the clearest indication of SolShare’s design ambition is that it sits in a category of its own.
The technology established the Inverter Power Sharing Device category within the standards, recognising a new class of grid-connected equipment designed specifically to sit between shared solar generation and multiple individual dwellings.
It’s an important distinction. SolShare is not simply adapting an existing solar product for apartments. It is changing the underlying architecture of how shared rooftop solar can work.
SolShare – 2026 Australian Good Design Award of the Year and Good Design Award for Sustainability. Image: Supplied
Design that scales
SolShare’s significance is ultimately reflected in its adoption. More than 13,000 apartments have now been connected, and more than 28GWh of solar energy has been delivered through the technology. Installations have roughly doubled year on year, and are forecast to double again in 2026.
Stella believes that growth has reinforced a broader lesson about how designers should approach infrastructure.
“It’s taught us that impact comes from designing the whole system, not just the device. The technology can be brilliant, but if it’s too difficult to install, commission, finance, maintain or understand, it won’t achieve scale.
“For SolShare, that has meant thinking about installers, residents, housing providers, governments and building asset managers alongside the hardware itself. The result is something that has grown from a world-first technology into a repeatable infrastructure product being deployed across multiple markets.”
Design that leads
“To me, design that leads means having the courage to challenge the status quo, particularly when it’s clear that what we’ve been doing isn’t working. Our environment is telling us that loudly. As designers and engineers, we have both an opportunity and a responsibility to create something better – even when there isn’t a clear path, and perhaps especially when there isn’t one.” – Stella Knorr, Chief Product Officer at Allume Energy
Australian Good Design Award for Sustainability
THE GOOD DESIGN AWARD FOR SUSTAINABILITY RECOGNISES PROJECTS THAT EMBODY EXCELLENCE IN DESIGN FOR SUSTAINABILITY AND CIRCULAR ECONOMY PRINCIPLES.
THE AWARD AIMS TO INSPIRE CHANGE TOWARDS A MORE SUSTAINABLE FUTURE.
SolShare recognises that a sustainable future only works when people can participate in it. It considers the rooftop, the building, the technology and the people living beneath it as part of the same system.
Making clean energy accessible
“Probably the biggest lesson is that access to clean energy isn’t an abstract sustainability issue – it has a very immediate human impact. We’ve now connected more than 13,000 apartments, and residents are typically seeing direct electricity bill savings of at least 30-40%. Adding a shared battery will increase those benefits even further.
“For some households that means simply being able to turn on a heater in winter, or afford a train fare to visit their family on a weekend.
“That’s an incredibly powerful reminder that good product design can simultaneously create environmental, financial and social value,” Stella shared.
Clean energy is no longer an abstract environmental ambition when it can change what a household can afford to do. Sustainability, in this case, happens at the scale of the home as well as the grid.
SolShare – 2026 Australian Good Design Award of the Year and Good Design Award for Sustainability. Image: Supplied
Designing for the life of the product
SolShare is a system designed with its entire lifecycle in mind. Major components are manufactured locally in Melbourne, close to final assembly. Its modular architecture allows key parts to be serviced or replaced rather than requiring the entire system to be discarded. Remote diagnostics support maintenance, while over-the-air software updates can extend the capabilities of hardware already in use.
Circular design becomes tangible here: repair a component rather than discard a system, update existing hardware rather than replace it and design for future use from the outset.
Making the most of what is already there
SolShare’s impact assessment identifies a potential global CO₂ abatement opportunity of 500 million tonnes annually, highlighting the scale of what becomes possible when apartment buildings are brought further into the renewable energy transition.
SolShare – 2026 Australian Good Design Award of the Year and Good Design Award for Sustainability. Image: Supplied
A more inclusive clean energy transition
The SolCentre portal also gives residents visibility over their solar generation, savings and environmental impact, making the relationship between individual energy use and the wider system easier to understand.
That combination of access and visibility gives people a tangible stake in the clean energy transition.
Design that changes the system
“I’m most proud that we’ve taken a complex engineering problem and turned it into something with a very simple outcome: more people can access affordable clean energy,” Stella reflected.
The simplicity of that outcome is precisely what makes the achievement so compelling. SolShare has demonstrated how Australian design, engineering and manufacturing can tackle a global infrastructure challenge by reconsidering the assumptions built into the systems around us.
Sustainability can sometimes feel like an enormous problem waiting for an equally enormous solution. SolShare shows the power of solving a very specific problem exceptionally well. It’s proof that sustainability can be practical, inclusive and deeply human, and that good design can bring the clean energy transition into buildings, homes and everyday lives.
Good Design Australia congratulates and thanks Allume Energy and the multidisciplinary team behind SolShare for creating a new model for apartment solar and demonstrating how thoughtful design can create lasting environmental, social and human value.
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