Allume’s SolShare wins 2026 Good Design Awards
In winning the national Good Design Award, Allume has once again helped shine a light on the needs and challenges facing apartment communities seeking access to renewable energy.
Congratulations to everyone at Allume for the win and for developing a product that unlocks renewable energy for thousands of apartment communities.
Listen to an ABC interview with Allume’s CEO and cofounder Cameron Knox.
Melbourne-based Allume Energy’s SolShare has been named Australian Good Design Award of the Year, leading a diverse field of projects recognised for their contributions to sustainability, healthcare, engineering, the built environment and social impact.
An Australian-designed technology that enables apartment residents to access the benefits of rooftop solar has taken the top honour at the 2026 Australian Good Design Awards, held at the International Convention Centre (ICC) Sydney on Friday 9 October.
SolShare, developed by Melbourne-based Allume Energy, received both the Australian Good Design Award of the Year and the Australian Good Design Award for Sustainability, recognising a design-led response to one of the persistent challenges of the clean energy transition: making rooftop solar accessible to people living in multi-residential buildings.
While rooftop solar has become increasingly commonplace in Australian homes, apartment buildings present a more complex proposition. SolShare addresses this by dynamically distributing electricity generated by a shared rooftop solar system between individual apartments according to their instantaneous energy needs.
The technology is already connecting more than 10,000 apartments across three continents, having delivered 23 gigawatt hours (GWh) of solar energy globally and helped residents save an average of 30 to 40 percent on their electricity bills.
Good Design Australia chair Dr Brandon Gien said the project demonstrated how thoughtful design could translate a complex problem into a practical solution with measurable benefits.
“Great design starts with deeply understanding a problem and finding a better way to solve it. SolShare does exactly that,” Gien.
“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.”
Established in 1958, the Australian Good Design Awards are Australia’s longest-running international design awards program. The 2026 edition spans 13 design disciplines and more than 30 categories, reflecting the increasingly broad application of design across products, services, infrastructure, policy and technology.
Read the full announcement on at Australian Design Review and find out more about SolShare on the Allume website.
