Clever Tech Shares Solar Power Across Multiple Apartments
“An amazing piece of technology” wins the top honour at this year’s Australian Good Design awards.
An unassuming white box that shares solar power amongst apartment dwellers has been awarded the top prize for not just good design but sustainability too. Allume Energy won for its innovative and highly practical SolShare system. The product, which works like a “traffic controller for solar” enables power produced by a shared rooftop system to be split among several apartments without multiple installations, individual inverters and meters; plus, it does away with lots of messy wiring. Dr Brandon Gien, chair of Good Design Australia, said SolShare was not only “an amazing piece of technology” but also a beautifully designed solution to a complex problem.
SolShare already connects more than 13,000 apartments across Australia and the UK, with typical electricity bill savings of 30 to 40 percent for residents. Australia is a global leader in generating electricity from the sun. More than 4.3m Australian households now have rooftop solar.
“Millions of people live in apartments, and many have had limited access to the benefits of rooftop solar. SolShare is a clever Australian design innovation that addresses that problem in a practical way, and it is already delivering benefits at significant scale.” Gien said the awards recognise design that is both functional as well as aesthetically pleasing, with innovation and societal impact among the key criteria.
It is the first project in the 68-year history of the awards to win both the Award of the Year and the Sustainability Award simultaneously.
