sunny solar array
Article
E.ON UK
Innovation

Sharing the sunshine: bringing green, clean energy to all

Not everyone has a roof to put panels on – but that shouldn’t mean missing out on solar. SolShare is a world-first platform that opens up access to solar energy for the millions of people in flats and social housing, helping to lower bills and cut carbon footprints, while taking another step toward a cleaner, fairer energy future.

Using the sun to power our lives isn’t new. But what is new is making that energy available to everyone – not just people living in houses with large, south-facing roofs.

In England alone, more than 5.2 million households – about 22% of the population – live in flats or maisonettes. In cities like London, that number climbs to more than half.  

So, while the solar revolution has been quietly transforming the rooftops of suburban homes, millions of people living in flats have missed out because they didn’t own their roofs and there was no way to fairly split the energy from shared panels to the homes underneath the roof.

And it’s not just city flats. About four million households in the social rented sector – about 50% of all social housing tenants live in flats or apartment buildings – also face barriers to accessing rooftop solar, even though many of them stand to benefit the most from lower bills and improved energy efficiency.

So, the question is: if these homes don’t own or control rooftop space, how do they access solar panels?

The answer lies in a SolShare – a world-first technology developed by Australian firm Allume, that connects multiple flats to a single solar system. It makes it possible for an entire block of flats to fairly share energy from a single rooftop solar system.

It works by physically splitting the energy generated by rooftop panels and directing it to multiple flats– delivering solar directly into each home without the need for separate inverters or complex wiring – and all this is done ‘behind the meter’ which means it doesn’t involve switching energy supplier or changing tariffs. Each household gets its own allocated share of the sunshine.

How the technology works

SolShare is designed to divide solar power from one set of solar panels to multiple places in a building, such as individual flats or offices. Normally, each place also has electricity coming from the grid through their own meters and charged based on whatever supplier and tariff they’ve chosen.

First, an inverter is used to change the solar energy into a form that can be shared by SolShare. This setup is usually found on the roof of buildings with multiple units, like apartment blocks, flats or office buildings.

Before the energy passes through each apartment's electricity meter, SolShare steps in to manage the distribution. It checks how much power each apartment is using from the grid and uses smart switches and clever software to decide how to distribute the solar energy, ensuring everyone gets their fair share.

People use energy at different times, so SolShare uses its own algorithm to maximise solar energy consumption, sending solar power to flats that need it during the day, and making sure everyone gets a balanced amount of solar energy over the course of every month.

It does this by monitoring the energy demands from all connected households every 200 milliseconds. It then directs the available solar power to optimise delivery to each flat, ensuring efficient use and a fair distribution of solar energy.

To install solar panels, or solar arrays, typically individual inverters have to be fitted into each home. In this case, with Solshare, the energy is delivered into a central point and means the residents have much easier access to their energy.

It’s clever, it’s efficient – and it’s already changing lives.

ECO4 - Bexhill

At E.ON, we’ve partnered with Allume to bring this technology to our customers. Using funding from our Energy Company Obligation, we’ve installed SolShare on a block of social housing flats in Bexhill, East Sussex, where residents are already seeing energy savings of between 20 and 50%. That’s real impact: lower bills, warmer homes, and a greener footprint.

And this isn’t just about one block in Bexhill.

The UK’s housing stock has a long way to go. The average EPC rating in England and Wales sits at a lowly Band D. With the Government aiming for all rented homes to hit a minimum EPC of Band C by 2030, solutions like SolShare are going to be vital. They offer landlords, local authorities and new housing developers a practical, scalable way to raise energy standards and reduce emissions - without overhauling entire buildings.

This partnership has the potential to be expanded not only into retrofitting existing flats and apartments – but also into the fast-growing new build sector.

SolShare also opens up a huge opportunity to bring solar to the ever-growing new build market. At E.ON, we’re already doing our bit to make solar standard through Eco2Solar, our new-build solar installation business that works with the UK’s leading property developers. Since 2007, Eco2Solar has installed panels on nearly 50,000 homes, powering more than 85 million kWh of renewable energy.

Now, with SolShare in our toolkit, we can extend that to new build flats and apartments – bringing solar, EV chargers, battery storage and even heat pumps into the mix. That means clean, green, future-ready homes from day one – no costly retrofits, just better living built in as standard.

With more than 1.5 million new homes needed across the UK, that’s not just an opportunity. It’s a responsibility.

It means homeowners will benefit from clean, green and more energy efficient homes from day one – no additional expense that households must pay – it’s just green energy as standard. It’s a huge step in the right direction, and just one of the ways we’re taking a step closer to decarbonising and reaching the UK’s net zero goals.

Together with Allume, we’re scaling up, building skills, and helping lead a national push for better, fairer, more sustainable homes — whether you live in a penthouse or a ground floor flat.