Twenty of the UK's biggest cities hosted events to raise awareness of the struggling supply chain that makes event happen. London's event began on a boat at 20:30, and as it made its way down the Thames notable landmarks such as the Royal Festival Hall, the London Eye, the National Theatre and Tate Modern were all illuminated red.
As the boat reached key locations such as Westminster Bridge and Jubilee Bridge, hundreds of volunteers dressed in red and 4,000 socially distanced supporters lined up on the banks of the Thames to ask the government to "throw us a line" with grants and extensions to the Coronavirus Job Retention and Self-Employed Income Support Schemes. For the finale QED projected the campaign messages onto Tate Modern's iconic 99m high chimney. The event gained national press coverage, reaching over a million people via social media, and was watched by over 125,000 on the Facebook live stream.
The logistical and technical challenges were both equally as great, and to achieve such an enormous projection at such short notice and under the most unusual and difficult of working conditions QED had to break new ground. There was no possibility of obtaining mains power or using conventional fossil fuel generators, so the only option was to use battery power - something that had never been previously been attempted on this scale and on such a high-profile event.
Four Panasonic RZ31K 30,000 lumen projectors and a disguise gx2c server system were used to cover the entire chimney, all powered from 8 x 5kVA VOLTstack batteries supplied by Green Voltage Ltd. Because sunset was so late everything had to be installed and lined up on the night before. Speed was very much of the essence in order not to drain the batteries too quickly - there needed to be sufficient battery power not only to line up and blend the projectors on the set-up night but also to run them on full power for at least three hours on the evening of the event.
QED Director Paul Wigfield commented "It was very much an adventure into the unknown. We had no opportunity to test out the VOLTstacks in advance, and under the searing 34 degrees of summer heat the projector fans were certainly working overtime, but the VOLTstacks still coped admirably. The high brightness and low power consumption of the Panasonic RZ31Ks combined with the VOLTstacks were truly a winning combination. They enabled us to do what would otherwise have been impossible, and most importantly they allowed us to deliver the message on behalf of the industry".