International Solar Solutions at a glance
| Feature | Detail |
|---|---|
| Founded | 2008 |
| Founder | Adrian Campbell, then 19 |
| Base | Gold Coast, Queensland |
| Business | Selling and installing rooftop solar |
| Peak headcount | About 40 |
| Systems installed | More than 300 |
| Sister companies | International LED Lighting Solutions; Green Energy Corporation of Australia |
| Capacity credited across all three | More than 6 MW |
| Years | 2008–2014 |
| Outcome | Closed; customers refunded |
This page covers the whole story in one place: how the company started, what it built and why it closed.
How International Solar Solutions began
Shepparton, a Goulburn Valley town in northern Victoria, is where Campbell was born in 1989 and where he grew up. His early life is covered on the Shepparton page.
He trained as a plumber. His early working years were spent on commercial sites, one of them Mount Tamborine Hospital, up in the Gold Coast hinterland.
He was 19 when he launched International Solar Solutions in 2008, with the Gold Coast as its base. The Gold Coast sits in south-east Queensland, about an hour's drive south of Brisbane. The company sold rooftop solar and fitted the systems for its customers.
What customers were buying
Most buyers were households hoping to cut their power bills. A rooftop system turns sunlight into electricity during the day. Power the home does not use can flow back to the grid, and under a feed-in tariff the household is paid for it. Businesses tend to buy larger systems to offset their daytime power use.
A typical job meant checking the roof, designing a system to suit it, supplying the panels and inverter, then fitting everything and connecting it to the grid.
Australia's solar boom
The business started just as rooftop solar took off across Australia. Several forces pushed demand up at once:
- Upfront support. Federal rebates, and later Solar Credits under the Renewable Energy Target, cut the cost of putting panels on a roof.
- Feed-in tariffs. State schemes paid households for power their panels sent back to the grid. Queensland's Solar Bonus Scheme opened in 2008.
- Cheaper panels. Panel prices fell steeply as global manufacturing scaled up.
Queensland, with strong sunshine and plenty of detached homes, became one of the busiest markets. The Gold Coast's large suburbs suited rooftop systems well. A crowd of new installers appeared to meet the demand, International Solar Solutions among them.
Growth: 40 staff, 300 systems and 6 MW
At its height the company employed about 40 people. Over its life the team fitted more than 300 systems.
Campbell also ran two sister companies:
- International LED Lighting Solutions. Lighting work: it supplied energy-efficient LED lighting to government clients and for public areas. LEDs use far less electricity than older types of lighting.
- Green Energy Corporation of Australia. Commercial solar: it fitted high-efficiency solar systems for businesses across Australia.
Taken together, the three companies account for more than 6 MW of generating capacity from solar, credited to Campbell. The same figure appears in his profile at First Nations Mining Australia, where he is Managing Partner.
A megawatt is a million watts. Home rooftop systems are measured in kilowatts, thousandths of a megawatt, so a total in megawatts reflects a large body of installations across homes and businesses.
International Solar Solutions timeline
| When | Event |
|---|---|
| 2008 | Campbell, 19, starts the company on the Gold Coast |
| 2011 | He moves his focus to a Bali resort and outsources management |
| 2014 | The company's run ends; customers are refunded |
| 2015 | Queensland's Office of Fair Trading takes the directors to court |
Why International Solar Solutions closed
In 2011 Campbell took on a big renovation in Bali: a Kuta property, the Puri Rama Resort, which he relaunched as Troppo Zone. The resort needed his full attention, so he outsourced the solar company's management.
That decision went badly. The managers he brought in ran the business into the ground.
When he stepped back in, completing the installations still outstanding would have cost more than giving customers their money back. He shut the company down and refunded customers. Around 36 jobs were lost, and he has said that is what he regrets most.
The 2015 court matter
The matter went to court in 2015. Queensland's Office of Fair Trading brought a case against the directors over systems that customers paid for in 2013 and 2014 but that were never installed. Campbell gives his own full account, including the fine and restitution, on his lessons page.
Reports from 2015 about the case still appear in searches. Campbell's account sits alongside that public record rather than replacing it.
What Campbell changed afterwards
The lesson he took was simple: don't hand a company to managers you can't oversee. In practice, customer money in his businesses never sits under one manager's sole control.
He describes the years from 2015 to 2018 as the period that reshaped how he runs companies. Three habits came out of it: contracts in writing before any money moves, a second signatory on the accounts, and never depending on a manager he cannot supervise. The rest of his story is in his full profile.
What came after solar
The Bali years that began in 2011 shaped what came next. Under Campbell, Troppo Zone became a well-known schoolies destination for young Australians. The resort was sold in 2014, and since that year he has run a Bali villa portfolio, with the same local team keeping the villas trading through COVID.
He learned Indonesian in Bali, and in 2021 he set up Kinnara, a property marketplace that now lists homes across 44 countries. All of his businesses, current and past, are on the companies page.