IN Brief:
- Actemium UK has delivered two new IONITY ultra-rapid EV charging hubs in Glasgow and Fort William.
- The sites include Alpitronic HYC 400 chargers, with the Fort William hub providing six 350 kW-plus charging bays off the A82.
- The projects extend high-power charging infrastructure in Scotland and underline the electrical delivery requirements behind rapid EV network expansion.
Actemium UK has delivered two new IONITY ultra-rapid EV charging hubs in Scotland, with sites completed in Glasgow and Fort William.
The projects include the installation of IONITY’s 700th ultra-rapid charging point in the UK and one of the few public 350 kW-plus charging hubs in the Scottish Highlands. The new hubs strengthen high-power charging coverage across both urban and long-distance routes.
The Glasgow hub, located at the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel in Strathclyde, is Actemium UK’s first IONITY project in the city. The fully operational site includes six Alpitronic HYC 400 chargers capable of serving up to 12 vehicles simultaneously.
The Fort William hub is located just off the A82, one of the main transport and tourism routes through the Highlands. The installation includes three Alpitronic HYC 400 chargers delivering 350 kW-plus power across six charging bays, supporting simultaneous vehicle charging at a location where high-power public infrastructure has historically been limited.
Actemium UK acted as principal contractor across both sites. Its scope covered civil engineering works, low-voltage electrical installation, testing, commissioning, and final handover. The Fort William scheme also incorporated design work and included more complex ground conditions, with drilling through rock formations and the installation of 20-metre-deep earth electrodes.
The projects form part of Actemium UK’s ongoing partnership with IONITY, which has delivered more than 160 high-power charging points across the UK since 2023. IONITY now operates around one third of the UK’s public 350 kW-plus charging points.
Ultra-rapid charging deployment is becoming a more demanding electrical infrastructure discipline as networks move from early corridor coverage to higher-density, higher-availability sites. A multi-charger hub depends on grid capacity, earthing design, protection coordination, civil design, cable routing, metering, communications, commissioning, and ongoing maintenance access.
Those requirements are amplified in locations such as the Highlands, where ground conditions, travel distances, local network capacity, and weather exposure can add complexity to installation and future service. Reliable high-power charging on strategic routes depends on electrical designs that can sustain repeated high-load operation, manage simultaneous charging, and remain accessible for maintenance without undermining site availability.
The Glasgow and Fort William installations show the split emerging in the EV charging market. Urban and motorway-adjacent sites are being built around throughput, convenience, and multi-bay capacity, while regional and tourism corridors need charging infrastructure that can support long-distance travel with fewer fallback options. Both models require robust power infrastructure, but the design constraints differ significantly.
As EV adoption increases, charge point operators are placing greater emphasis on turnkey delivery partners able to combine independent connection provider expertise, civil works, electrical installation, commissioning, certification, and maintenance. The bottleneck for ultra-rapid charging is increasingly the delivery of engineered sites that can be connected, energised, and kept operational at scale.
The two Scottish hubs add further high-power coverage for IONITY and demonstrate the installation work behind the expansion of public rapid charging. Charging speed is the visible metric for drivers; the electrical infrastructure behind it determines whether that power can be delivered reliably across varied sites and network conditions.