After 154 years serving the electrical sector, Electrical Review is set to be refreshed for the realities of modern electrification.
Electrical Review has been around for 154 years. Next year it will turn 155. In fact, the very first issue of Electrical Review came before we had telephones, or cars, or even sliced bread. As a brand, Electrical Review is older than Coca-Cola or IBM.
That’s the context of the brand that ultimately I have had stewardship over for the past five years. I know that the history of Electrical Review matters, it’s why the 150th Anniversary Edition was a love letter to the innovations that this publication has been a witness to over the years. But while we can honour the past, we can’t be stuck in it.
The enduring power of Electrical Review isn’t because of its age, it’s because it knew that it had to keep up with an industry that is in a constant state of change. As highlighted in the 150th Anniversary Edition, this publication has reported on the invention of the telephone and the lightbulb – and yet, both technologies are unlikely to get a mention on our pages in 2026. That’s because we’ve recognised that things have changed, and we’ve tried to keep up.
The problem is that change looks very different today compared to even five years ago. That’s because in recent years, there has been a distinct shift in the pace and complexity of the decisions facing the people designing, building and operating electrical infrastructure across the UK.
Electrification is no longer a side topic. It now sits at the centre of how sites are designed, how fleets operate, how projects are financed, how reliability is protected, and how grid constraints shape what is possible. After all, without a proper strategy shaped around electrification, everything comes crashing down – whether it’s Net Zero or AI, two key pillars of the UK’s economic strategy.
That shift is why Electrical Review is being refreshed.
I want to stress that this is not just a cosmetic change. We’re not hyping up some small changes around the periphery – this is a big change. Sure, there will be a new look, and the Electrical Review website will be completely transformed, but the more important change is the kind of content you can expect to see in the future.
That’s because Electrical Review is being rebuilt to become more useful to the people who have to make decisions, manage risks and deliver projects in the real world.
At the heart of that work is a more precise answer to a question every trade title eventually has to face: what do we want to be known for?
For many years, Electrical Review did what a lot of long-established publications do. It grew to keep pace with the changes of the industry, and ended up covering a broad sweep of the electrical world. That breadth brought value, but it also created a familiar problem. When everything is included, it becomes harder for readers to know what to expect, and harder for our coverage to build real authority over time.
So the focus is tightening.
Electrical Review is being rebuilt around a single organising idea: practical, UK-relevant coverage of electrification infrastructure delivery, with a clear emphasis on the choices, trade-offs and risks that sit between ambition and execution.
If you read my Editor’s Comment at the beginning of this issue, you’ll have seen me use the word delivery quite a few times – and that’s because it’s the guiding principle of the new Electrical Review. It’s no longer about strategy alone, but about enabling the delivery of electrification.
In practice, that means more attention will be given to the grid interface realities that shape projects from the start, including connections, constraints, capacity and the implications these have for viability and delivery. It means deeper coverage of delivery and reliability, including commissioning, competence, evidence, uptime and failure modes. It means more focus on infrastructure decisions made on sites themselves, from resilience and monitoring to controls, integration and operational handover. And it means stronger reporting on electrification at scale, whether for fleets, estates, campuses, or commercial and industrial sites.
Just as importantly, it means spending less time on content that does not help professionals deliver the work. Broad coverage that cannot be connected back to real design, procurement, commissioning or operational decisions will have less of a place as Electrical Review evolves.
That does not mean Electrical Review is becoming narrow for the sake of it, or retreating into a niche that excludes the wider industry. In many ways, the opposite is true. The aim is to focus more clearly on the points where electrification succeeds or fails, where ambition meets operational reality, and where professionals most need reliable, relevant information.
Over the coming weeks on the Electrical Review website, we will share more about what is being built, the thinking behind it, and how the changes will affect the way the title serves the industry. Not everything will be revealed at once, but the direction and intent will be clear.
For readers who have followed Electrical Review for years, that support matters. For those who have found it more recently, the welcome is the same. The goal is simple: to make Electrical Review a sharper, clearer and more valuable destination for the next era of electrification.
I can’t wait for you to come along with us.
