Client
Nottingham City Council
Nottingham, United Kingdom
Hardware
2x PowerShelter lockers
Fire suppression
Key access
One compartment per battery
Users
Local residents borrowing from the Travel Well Community Bike Library
Impact
Lithium-ion charging moved off the worktop and into individual compartments
Charging runs without staff supervision
Programme scaled to support up to 300 residents
The challenge: unmanaged lithium-ion battery charging inside a public facility
Nottingham City Council needed to charge a growing fleet of e-bike batteries inside a community facility, without staff on hand to supervise it.
The Travel Well Community Bike Library lends e-bikes, cargo bikes and adapted cycles to residents free of charge, opening active travel to people who could not otherwise afford it or did not feel confident buying one. The lending model was the easy part. The charging was not.
As the fleet grew, dozens of high-capacity lithium-ion batteries needed charging between loans. They were charging on a desk setup in a shared community space. For the team responsible for the building, that is a fire exposure sitting inside an occupied public facility, and one that grows with every bike added to the fleet.
The workable options were narrow. Cap the fleet at a size staff could watch. Restrict borrowing to staffed hours. Or move the charging into hardware built for the job, and stop managing the risk by supervision.
The solution: one locked compartment per battery, handed over with the bike
PowerShelter installed two fire-safe charging lockers, replacing the desk setup with an individual compartment for every battery in the fleet.
The lockers fit the way the library already worked. A resident borrowing a bike receives a key to the bike and a key to its battery compartment. They collect the charged battery, fit it to the bike, and go. On return, the battery goes back into its compartment to charge for the next borrower. Batteries are detached and carried the short distance between locker and bike, so nothing is plugged in across the room.
Each battery charges in its own compartment. Every battery sits in a separate steel compartment rather than in a shared pile on an open worktop. The design is intended to keep a thermal runaway inside the compartment it starts in, rather than letting it reach the batteries next to it.
No supervision required by design. Residents collect and return their own battery. The charging area does not need a staff member standing in it for the programme to run.
Installed without building works. Both units went in with minimal disruption and no groundworks, and the local teams running the programme operate them directly.
PowerShelter's current equivalent for indoor installations is the SmartShelter, with integrated fire suppression designed to contain lithium-ion battery fire events.
“We found PowerShelter and their offering fit perfectly to our needs."
Samuel Shoesmith — Project Officer
The impact: a community bike library that runs without a charging room
With the charging arrangement settled, Nottingham City Council could direct the programme at what it was designed for: getting more people onto bikes.
Charging moved off the worktop. Batteries charge inside dedicated compartments rather than loose on an open desk alongside boxes, tools and mains sockets.
Staff time came off charging duty. Handover is a key and a compartment. Nobody needs to monitor a charging room for the fleet to be available.
Up to 300 residents supported into active travel through the bike library, with e-bikes, adapted bikes and cargo models available free of charge (figure per Transport Nottingham).
Key takeaway: charging infrastructure is what lets a shared e-bike scheme grow
A shared e-bike fleet is only as large as its charging arrangement allows. Where batteries charge in an open room, the fleet is limited to what staff can watch, and the hours are limited to when staff are there. The active travel team writes the ambition, and the facilities team carries the risk.
For any authority planning a shared e-bike scheme, the charging hardware is not a procurement detail to resolve later. It is the thing that decides how big the scheme can get.
