Munich's award organisers have unveiled the shortlist for The Smarter E Award 2026, with finalists announced across five categories: photovoltaics, energy storage, e-mobility, smart integrated energy and outstanding projects. Solar Promotion has framed this year's edition firmly against the geopolitical backdrop, from the war in Iran to the lingering effects of the wider energy crisis, presenting renewables as both climate policy and a hedge against fossil fuel exposure. Winners will be named on the eve of The Smarter E Europe in Munich, the ceremony is free to attend. The exhibition runs from 23 to 25 June at Messe München.
Germany is well represented across the categories: In Photovoltaics: Solyco Solar is shortlisted twice, for the SOLon35 vertical green-roof system and for TECC-Connect, an interconnection technology that does without silver, lead or bismuth; Goldbeck Solar for HeliomatiX, aimed at automating utility-scale plant construction. Storage: Volytica Diagnostics is in for AvEn, a dispatch KPI that tells operators how much energy in a battery is actually available for trading or grid services, a question that grows in weight as storage begins trading on its own merits.
Sweden’s Solar Energy Award spotlights scale and innovation
E-mobility, increasingly a story about high-power and megawatt charging, sees HagerEnergy shortlisted for a bidirectional EV charger that lets vehicles supply buildings, Amperfied for a charging-as-a-service model, and Fraunhofer IVI for an underbody charging system aimed at logistics and municipal fleets. Smart integrated energy: Coneva for a modular EMS for the C&I sector, Fenecon for an integrated hybrid inverter and EMS package, and Berlin-based Blindleister for Grid Data Intelligence, which uses graph neural networks and AI-supported satellite analysis to give operators and developers a real-time picture of grid capacity.
Outstanding projects: IBC Solar is shortlisted for Germany's first agriPV park with solar trackers, the 11 GWh-per-year Veringenstadt site, and SMA Altenso for Africa's first integrated green hydrogen plant, an off-grid facility in Namibia. (TF)
You can find the full list of finalists at The smarter E.
