Energy supplier E.ON UK has today (17 June) announced that it has signed a strategic investment agreement with Australian firm Allume Energy to help the firm expand into the UK.
E.ON UK has invested £4 million into Allume Energy to enable Allume to expand the reach of its SolShare technology within the UK market. SolShare allows solar energy from a single rooftop solar PV installation to be fairly shared amongst multiple homes in the same building in order to allow residents of flats to access solar PV energy.
Residents are supplied their energy when they are using by a pre-determined allocation, allowing them to lower their energy bills. Many blocks of flats that do have solar panels fitted currently only use this energy to power the common areas of the building while residents still pay their full electricity bill. According to Allume, a shared rooftop solar PV system can reduce resident energy bills by between 30% and 60%.
Chris Norbury, CEO of E.ON UK, called the investment an “important step towards making the transition to clean energy more inclusive.” He added: “More than a fifth of British homes – five million – are low and medium rise apartment buildings with rooftop space for solar panels, but no way of directly benefiting until now. We see an enormous opportunity to help people to lower their energy bills and reduce their carbon emissions, making solar more useful and affordable for the many, not the few.”
Cameron Knox, CEO of Allume, agreed, adding: “People living in flats experience the highest fuel poverty rates in the UK, yet have historically been locked out of rooftop solar due to technical and ownership considerations.”
Allume has installed the SolShare system on over 6,000 homes globally, these systems have generated and shared a combined over 14GWh of solar energy. Of Allume’s installations in the UK, over half of these are located on buildings operated by social housing providers; the company states that the system is one of the most cost-efficient ways of retrofitting older buildings.
Social housing has become an increasing target of efforts to expand the rollout of rooftop solar PV in the UK, as evidenced by a scheme launched by the London Borough of Hackney earlier this year. Since January 2025, 28 blocks across three Hackney Council housing estates have been fitted with a total of 4,000 solar PV panels, allowing 800 households to buy power at around 15% less than the average market rate of electricity in the area.
