Public Sector

Our commercial projects team help architects and buildings professionals to design and deliver first-class solar new build projects

As more and more people adopt electric vehicles, your business will need to provide charge points for your own fleets, staff and customers

Rooftop solar panels are the cheapest way of providing electricity to a building and could reduce your power costs by more than half

Public sector green installations

The public sector is a key actor in the transition to a low carbon future. Because they can invest for the long-term and have a mandate to make society fairer and greener, organisations like Councils and Housing Associations can make a huge difference. They can set out bold and holistic visions for the future and directly implement them.

National government have set a target to remove internal combustion engine vehicles from our streets by 2035. This policy implies a complete change in our transport infrastructure – replacing all petrol stations with millions of electric vehicle charge points. Over the next decade, local councils will have to ensure there is adequate public charge point provision within their region.

As significant property owners, councils and housing associations also have a responsibility to reduce emissions from the buildings sector. Reducing bills for tenants helps reduce fuel poverty, and solar panels for social housing directly achieves this. Solar PV can also help councils minimise their internal running costs, which retains funds for frontline services.

EV Charge Point Installer Of The Year

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Public sector EV charge points

As the demand for electric vehicles grows, councils will have to provide public EV chargers in their region to ensure EV drivers can always be mobile. The market is expected to snowball, which will mean each council will be required to provide thousands of charge points across their jurisdictions.

Councils will have to provide several critical services:

Public EV chargers in town-centre car parks, to attract EV drivers to local shops
Fleet EV charging for the council’s internal fleets of vehicles and for their staff to travel to work
On-street charge points for those without driveways – which can be more than 50% of households in urban areas
Rapid charging infrastructure for essential mobility services such as taxis

Joju are one of the most active companies in the country assisting councils in managing their EV charge point installation programmes. We work with public authorities from feasibility studies, through to installation, commissioning and after-sales care. We are on major UK procurement frameworks for EV charge points including the Central Southern Regional Framework, Crown Commercial Services, ESPO and Transport for London.

Local councils also have responsibilities for air quality. Facilitating the switch to EVs will improve local air quality by removing internal combustion engine vehicles from the road, and improve the respiratory health of all residents.

We’ve set up the Joju Charging Portal as a knowledge base for councils and other public bodies, such as the blue light sector. It has information on all types of public EV charging schemes, grants and funding, and how to commission a feasibility study from us.

With councils needing to deploy many thousands of units over the next decade, finance will be critical. That’s why Joju have developed a fully financed solution allowing councils to instal public EV chargers at zero up-front cost. Councils can also take a share in the income the charge points generate.

We’re working extremely hard to improve local air quality in Southampton and encouraging the uptake of electric vehicles is a very important part of our strategy. We’re doing this by installing public chargepoints in council mutli-storey carparks in the city centre, with the intention of rolling out a larger scheme across the city.

- Councillor Christopher Hammond

Southampton City Council

Solar panels for councils

Like any workplace, councils can benefit from solar panels installed on the roofs of their own offices, warehousing, libraries and schools. These commercial rooftop installations will give local authorities the most robust returns on investment, as the majority of electricity will be consumed in the buildings, directly reducing bills.

Additionally, such projects send a clear message around decarbonisation and green technology to the broader public. They act as a clear demonstrator that going solar is beneficial for the environment, and financially beneficial as well. These are significant acts for councils establishing a sustainable vision for their regions.

We’ve made great progress installing solar panels on our estates. We also sell the surplus energy we’re generating back to the grid and this money goes back into the city’s housing services.

– Bill Randall

Chair of Housing, Brighton Council

HOLISTIC PUBLIC SECTOR APPROACHES

As multi-technology specialists, Joju Solar are well placed to integrate your electric vehicle charge point needs with solar PV and battery storage. We can help councils develop their holistic low-carbon visions across both the transport and buildings sectors.

Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council were among the first to recognise this. They implemented a rollout of 50 EV charge points across the borough. However, they realised that this would lead to an increase in electricity use across their estate. They therefore decided to offset the predicted increase in demand with their own solar power generation, hosted on their own buildings. They even complemented this with battery storage at some sites. It’s a neat way of ensuring that the emissions from electric vehicles are truly zero.

Solar carports, at offices or on car parks also offer an opportunity to deploy multiple green technologies holistically. Co-locating generation and EV charge points is a highly visual way of demonstrating a commitment to clean transport solutions.