Solar for the University of Manchester's Travelling Power Station

This is one of the less usual solar jobs Renegade has been involved in, in a good way. It is not a van, strictly. It is a trailer called the Travelling Power Station, built as a mobile space for talking about energy, communities and how people can get involved in the changes happening around electricity.

Ashley helped with the design and installed the solar side of it in conjunction with the University of Manchester. That is the bit that sits in our lane: making a mobile installation generate and manage its own power properly, so the project can turn up at community events and run without being treated like a normal building.

The wider project is the University's, with the Travelling Power Station now starting a programme of visits to community groups. There is a Festival of Social Science page for the project, and the team has set up a separate Instagram account for people who want to follow where it goes. The trailer itself is very practical: lights, displays, places to sit and kit for people to handle, with the solar doing useful work rather than just being something to point at.

Trial run in Edinburgh

The first proper test was at PeopleFest, the anthropology festival in Edinburgh, at the end of May. The trailer made the trip, the solar setup survived the journey, and the team had a chance to show people round before the community programme starts properly.

That matters with a mobile project like this. A house roof does not get dragged up the motorway and parked outside a festival. Anything on a trailer has to handle movement, weather, setup time and people using it in places that were not designed around it.

Where it is going next

The next public stop we have been told about is Liverpool, where the Travelling Power Station is due to spend a few weeks. It starts with the Summer Street Party at TwoUpTwoDown, the Liverpool community organisation formerly known as Homebaked, on Saturday 11 July 2026 at 77 Grasmere Street, L5 6RH.

Ashley has also said Renegade will be attending some of the community days while the trailer is stationed around different places, including a Middleton stop when that part of the programme is confirmed.

The project has its own Travelling Power Station Instagram if you want to see more of it in use.

What it shows about solar work

Most of our work is still normal solar panel installation, battery storage, EV chargers and electrical work around Greater Manchester. This job is different, but it shows the same thing from another angle: solar is not just a set of panels on a roof. It is wiring, controls, storage, load, weather, access and what the system is actually there to do.

On a house, that means sizing the solar and battery around the way the household uses electricity. On the Travelling Power Station, it means building solar into something that moves between communities and has to work when people turn up to use it. That is not the usual kind of install, but the electrical thinking is the same.