Kempower partners with Roam at Heathrow hotel

Kempower has supplied chargepoint operator Roam with the infrastructure for charging points at Hilton London Heathrow Terminal 5.

The site will facilitate charging for guests and staff with EVs, and also support the growing fleet of electric taxis servicing the Heathrow area.

The charge site, consisting of ten DC charging bays, provides ultra-fast charging for hotel guests and staff as well as passing vehicles and local taxis. The site is an existing charging station which has been upgraded with Kempower’s infrastructure after a refit project by Roam.

Kempower supplied Roam with two 600kW Power Units which deliver charging power to six Kempower Satellites. Four dispensers are double-plug Satellites which can deliver up to 150kW of ultra-fast charging power to each vehicle, while two are single-plug Satellites with capacity to deliver up to 300kW.

Roam has also installed twenty 22kW AC chargers at the hotel, suitable for charging during longer stays and further boosting capacity.

It is expected that the new charge site will be popular with taxi drivers servicing the Heathrow area. More than half of London’s black cabs are already electric and this figure is steadily increasing as a result of government funding and incentives.

The Plug-in Taxi Grant, originally launched in 2017 and extended until April 2026, offers drivers and firms a grant of £4,000 per new electric taxi purchased. The scheme has been open to eligible taxi drivers and businesses, with vehicles that meet the ultra-low emission criteria able to benefit from the grant.

Rolle Nieminen, Kempower’s head of sales for the UK & Ireland, said: “The location of this charging site in the heart of the busy Heathrow area means that we can meet the needs of a range of EV drivers. Heathrow taxi drivers, for example, will benefit from a convenient point to recharge their vehicle in between fares and the hope is that an increase in available infrastructure will encourage more taxi and private vehicle hire firms to transition their fleet.”

Kempower’s DC charging technology delivers not only high charging power but optimised charge times through its dynamic power management system. This allows the total available power to be shared dynamically in real-time depending on the charging needs of each connected vehicle with best-in-market granularity. The system also has redundancy, meaning that, if one charger in the system is temporarily down, it doesn’t impact the rest of the network.

James Randall, CEO of Roam, said: “UK regulations state that fast-charging points must have 99% uptime throughout the year, so a crucial part of this project was enlisting reliable and tested technology. Kempower’s chargers deliver this in abundance and we’re proud to be offering this high-quality charging for our customers. Distributed power levels up to 300kW allow us to keep waiting times at a minimum at what will be a very busy charge site serving the Heathrow area.”