UK infrastructure services company FM Conway has been chosen by the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham to provide residential on-street charging across the borough.
FM Conway will install 2,000 SureCharge units across Hammersmith and Fulham, as part of a wider programme to deliver more than 3,000 charging solutions across the borough by March 2023.
The decision follows Hammersmith and Fulham Council’s recent commitment to invest £5m in local EV infrastructure.
Working with partner JoJu Solar, FM Conway will operate on Transport for London’s (TfL) Go Ultra Low City Scheme (GULCS) framework to begin rolling out its SureCharge solution across Hammersmith and Fulham from May 2022.
As part of the contract, FM Conway is matching funding from the UK Office for Low Emission Vehicles already secured by Hammersmith and Fulham to provide EV chargepoints to the borough.
The SureCharge units offer the option to utilise existing streetlight columns and supply to transform its infrastructure into in-column chargers through patented technology, Safevolt.
Safevolt is designed to enable the SureCharge unit to be added to the door of a streetlight column, removing the need for secondary earthing, such as excavating the footway to install an earth mat.
According to FM Conway, the solution will also provide Hammersmith and Fulham Council with the ability to readily relocate on to other columns across the EV network where required.
Graham Cartledge, lighting director at FM Conway, said: “Using existing lamp columns for EV charging is a cost-effective way of providing residents with an on-street charging solution.
“We are able to utilise the lamp columns adjacent to parking bays in areas where there are very few properties with driveways/garages, which seems the obvious choice.”
What’s more, the new 5.5kWh chargers use totally renewable energy, with a cost of 28p per kilowatt hour.
Councillor Stephen Cowan, leader of Hammersmith & Fulham Council, said: “Hammersmith & Fulham is on the fast track to creating the best e-charge infrastructure in Britain.
“With SureCharge, we’ve now found a way to connect more parts of the borough to the grid even faster.
“By developing cost-effective, state-of-the-art technologies with top partners like FM Conway, we’re matching quantity with quality.”
Hammersmith and Fulham Council reportedly already has the highest number of chargepoints per resident anywhere in UK, including 10 24-hour rapid chargepoints and the first Shell EV charging hub.
