Mirvac partners with startup Allume Energy for apartment, office solar sharing

Melbourne-based startup Allume Energy has been selected by Mirvac to provide solar sharing technology to publicly listed property developer Mirvac. The approach, Mirvac claims allows its commercial and residential apartment tenants to consume solar installed on multi-tenant buildings.

May 28, 2019 Jonathan Gifford

Mirvac is attempting to provide apartment residents with solar through its new partnership.

Image: Mirvac

While residential solar arrays offer short paybacks and are a no-brainer for an increasing number of Australian households each year, supplying solar to the growing number of apartment dwellers is a challenge. This is also true of office tenants, whose power consumption profile are generally a good match for rooftop PV:

Property developer and building owner Mirvac has announced that it will deploy the services of Allume Energy nationally, to try to meet this challenge. Allume’s Solshare technology allows for the consumption and metering of rooftop solar among multiple building tenants.

“Our technology allows residents to share a single solar system,” said Allume CEO Cameron Knox. “Our distribution technology feeds solar to those apartments using the most energy, maximising the reduction in electricity bills.”

Allume claims that residents can save up to 40% on their electricity bills through deploying Solshare.

Mivac reported that previously it had been frustrated when deploying solar across its properties due to limited roof space – indicating that the developer may turn to offsite solar or a virtual sharing of solar electricity across sites in its deployment of Solshare.

“We have implemented solar in our developments previously but were frustrated by the limitations – so we sought out a solution and found it in Allume Energy,” said Mirvac’s head of residential Stuart Penklis.

“We were so impressed with the technology that we have partnered with Allume and will deliver their shared solar technology on select apartments in our brand new Folia apartment building which has just launched at our prestigious Tullamore community in Doncaster, Victoria and we are now assessing it for use across all our assets,” he says.

The partnership with Mirvac is a sizeable win for Allume, showing that a major property player places trust in its technology. The startup was supported by the University of Melbourne accelerator program.

In 2018, Mirvac announced a $90 million partnership with the Clean Energy Finance Corporation to provide solar and storage systems across 300 free-standing homes.

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