The archive · Product Ideas · Product decision · 2025–2026
Sunology's Storey designs a home battery to live in the living room — Red Dot BoB 2026
Sunology and Propeller Design make a home battery look like furniture — then ship the 30kg unit in paper-only packaging.
Sunology · Propeller Design AB
What it had to solve
Residential batteries were sold as technical appliances — black boxes with blinking LEDs that owners hid in utility closets. Sunology wanted solar self-consumption to feel like a normal part of domestic life, and a 30.5kg product still had to survive freight, which usually meant plastic foam.
How it works
Home energy storage had a visual problem: batteries were designed as technical appliances, black boxes with blinking LEDs that households hid in utility closets or garages. Sunology's mission was to make solar self-consumption an everyday, domestic act, so the battery itself had to stop looking like something you apologise for.
The idea was to design Storey as a piece of home furniture rather than energy equipment. Propeller Design aimed for a simplified visual language inspired by home interiors, in deliberate contrast to the performance-oriented look typical of the category, while making sustainability structural: no adhesives or permanent joints, fewer components, efficient assembly.
The execution softened everything: pale rounded aluminium, connections and screws hidden, a simple LED matrix for status, and integrated handles on modular 2.2kWh units that stack up to four for 8,800Wh of storage. Launched in September 2025 at €1,390, it plugs into a standard outlet. Even freight followed the idea: a 30.5kg unit ships in honeycomb paper and paper straps carrying a 'Reuse me!' tag — no plastic foam.
Storey received the Red Dot Award: Product Design 2026 top honour 'Best of the Best' and the BIG SEE Grand Prix 2026. Design and energy press alike framed it as one of the rare batteries that belongs in a living room, and the paper crate as proof that plastic-free packaging can handle serious weight.
Why it lands
- Sunology and Propeller treated the category's 'garage equipment' look as the real problem, not the battery's performance.
- Removing adhesives and permanent joints made the object cleaner to look at and more sustainable to make at once.
- Modular 2.2kWh units with handles let the product grow with the household instead of forcing one big cabinet.
- Extending the same design logic to freight turned packaging into a brand statement and proof that plastic-free heavy shipping works.
What it did
The battery won Red Dot: Best of the Best 2026 and the BIG SEE Grand Prix 2026, and the paper-only crate was covered as proof that plastic-free packaging can carry a 30kg product; pv magazine reported the September 2025 launch of a 2,200Wh module at €1,390 that scales to 8,800Wh.
What you can take
When a category reads as 'equipment', redesign its signals: infrastructure that looks like furniture gets to live in plain sight — and the same logic can extend to its packaging.
Since then
Reviews presented Storey as one of the few home batteries you can place in a living space without hiding it, and design press treated the fibre packaging as a proof of concept for eliminating plastic on heavy, freighted products. Sunology continued to market the range around simplicity and longevity, including a 15-year warranty and a 7,500-cycle guarantee, while the Red Dot and BIG SEE awards reinforced its design-led positioning.
Sources
- Designer Profile: Propeller Design AB — Interview with Simon Jonasson, Chris Lekström
- France's Sunology introduces modular residential battery
- When Paper Does the Heavy Lifting: Sunology's Storey Packaging
- 揭晓！2026德国红点最佳设计奖（完整名单）
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