Alectrona
Commercial solar by areaAlectrona designs and installs commercial solar over 50 kWp across Bradford, from the Canal Road corridor to the wholesale belt off Thornton Road, with an in-house drone survey of the roof before anything is sized.
These are representative example reviews, not yet-collected customer feedback. They are written to illustrate the kind of feedback Alectrona aims to earn and are shown as design placeholders while we gather and verify reviews from our first commercial clients. Alectrona is the commercial solar trading brand of RVTC LTD.
What set Alectrona apart was the documented design pack. We had quotes from three installers, but only Alectrona handed us a full set of drawings, a single-line diagram and a design referencing BS 7671 and the G99 connection process. The whole thing read like an engineering submission rather than a sales brochure. Our M&E consultant reviewed it and signed it off without a single query. That gave the board the confidence to release the capital.
Other firms priced our roof off a satellite image and a desktop guess. Alectrona flew an in-house drone survey, fully insured and flown by a qualified commercial drone pilot, and built a 3D model of the actual roof. It picked up plant, vents and a parapet line that a flat aerial photo had completely missed, which changed the panel layout. I would rather find that out at design stage than on the day the scaffold goes up. The accuracy of that survey is the reason I trusted everything that followed.
As a finance director I was wary of being oversold a system bigger than we could use. Alectrona modelled the array against our actual half-hourly consumption data rather than an annual total, so it is sized to what we genuinely draw on site during the day. They were honest that exporting surplus is worth far less than self-consumption, and built the design around that. The capital case stacked up because the engineering was honest, not because the numbers were inflated.
We were undecided between buying outright, leasing and a PPA. Alectrona laid out all three side by side with the pros and cons of each against our balance sheet, instead of pushing the one that pays them best. They were clear about where a PPA makes sense and where capex wins, and pointed us at our own accountant for the tax treatment. The survey and design took a little longer than I expected, but the thoroughness was worth the wait. Genuinely consultative.
The install crew were tidy and well run, and worked to a clear CDM 2015 plan with a proper site induction and RAMS. What impressed me most was the handover. We received a full commissioning pack with the IEC 62446-1 test results, certification, O&M documentation and an as-built record for our maintenance team. As the people who have to live with this asset for the next twenty years, having that paperwork in order matters enormously. Nothing was left loose.
I expected the usual hard sell and got the opposite. After surveying our site Alectrona told us one roof section was not worth covering because of shading, and that a smaller, well-sited array was the better investment than filling every square metre. There was no commission-driven upselling and no pressure. For a six-figure capital project, that straight talk is exactly what you want from the people advising you. We will be using them again on our second site.
Alectrona is the commercial arm of RVTC LTD, working on solar over 50 kWp for businesses across Bradford and the BD postcodes: BD1 in the city centre, BD3 and BD4 out through Laisterdyke and Bowling Back Lane, BD5 and BD7 around Listerhills, and BD8 up towards Manningham. We are Yorkshire-based and quick to your site, and we cover the wider conurbation, including Shipley, Keighley, Cleckheaton and Halifax, from the same base.
We have not yet installed in Bradford, so there is no local job list to point at, and we will not pretend otherwise. What we bring is the engineering a system this size needs. Above 50 kWp a rooftop array sits outside MCS, the structural and electrical stakes are higher, and the design has to be built around the building's real load rather than a roof-area estimate. That work starts with an on-site drone survey and a half-hourly model, and it is the same on a Bradford mill roof as anywhere else we work.
Bradford's commercial roofs are genuinely their own mix. The metropolitan district holds the highest density of former textile-mill buildings in England, and a large share of that stock has been converted to multi-let units: brick-and-timber structures carrying broad flat or shallow-pitch roofs, but with lower structural loading than a modern shed and, often, fragile or heritage roof coverings. That is the central design question across much of the city. On a converted mill the roof area is usually there, but whether it can carry an array, and how, has to be settled by a structural survey first, not assumed. We treat the heritage roofing and loading check as the starting point on this kind of building, settled before any panel layout is drawn.
Alongside the mill stock sits a heavier industrial base. The Canal Road industrial corridor and Laisterdyke run light-industrial and manufacturing units with steady weekday demand, and Listerhills science park adds technology and research occupiers around the city centre. Both carry the kind of daytime load that solar offsets well, with machinery, compressors, extraction and small-power running through the working day.
The third strand is Bradford's wholesale and distribution economy. The city is a major Asian-goods wholesale hub, and the cash-and-carry and warehouse stock around Manningham and Thornton Road brings large, simpler roofs over storage and pick operations. Those buildings pull a broad daytime load and tend to self-consume a high share of what an array produces. Across all three, the value comes from using generation on site rather than exporting it, so we model the real half-hourly load for each building before sizing anything.
Every Bradford quote starts with an on-site survey, and our drone pilot travels to the city the same as anywhere in Yorkshire. The pilot is in-house and fully insured, holding the A2 CofC and GVC, and flies a 3D survey of the roof. On the city's converted-mill stock that matters: the drone reads pitch, orientation, shading, parapets and the condition of older coverings without anyone walking a fragile heritage roof to find out. That model feeds a PV*SOL design built against your half-hourly consumption, so the array is sized to the load you actually carry, and the layout is only fixed once the roof, its loading and any structural limits are accounted for.
The distribution network operator across Bradford is Northern Powergrid, and any commercial system this size connects under a G99 application to them. That application, and the way it shapes a design, matters more here than in some areas. There are known capacity constraints on the network around Bradford, with the Manningham and Bradford South primaries among the points where headroom can be tight. A constrained primary does not stop a project, but it can affect how much export the network will accept, and it is one reason we raise the connection position early. Where an export limit looks likely, we design to it from the start, looking at G99 export limitation and, where it helps the case, battery storage to hold surplus generation on site rather than push it to a constrained grid.
We also take on independent operation and maintenance, including older and FiT-era commercial arrays installed by someone else. Bradford has plenty of systems now several years into their life, and a panel does not have to be ours for us to monitor it, clean it, fault-find it or bring it back to specification. This work is brand-agnostic and runs through our sister operation, Solar Tech Support, so the diagnostic and repair side is handled by people who do it day in, day out.
We will not publish a fixed response time or service-level promise we have not agreed with you, because the honest answer depends on the site, the kit and the contract. What we will do is set out plainly what an O&M arrangement covers before you commit to it, so an ageing array on a Bradford mill or estate roof keeps earning rather than quietly underperforming.
Few districts in England put planning as close to the centre of a solar design as Bradford does. Bradford Metropolitan District Council is the local planning authority, and the district carries around 60 conservation areas, among them Little Germany, one of the most intact Victorian merchant quarters in the North. The textile heritage that shaped the city also listed a great deal of it: the Grade II* Lister Mills complex at Manningham is only the most visible of a stock of listed and locally significant mill buildings whose roofs are exactly the broad, south-facing planes a commercial array wants.
That overlap is the real local design constraint. On a modern shed in BD4, a rooftop array is usually permitted development and the work is structural and electrical. On a listed mill or a building inside a conservation area, panel visibility, roof-plane choice and fixings can need listed-building consent or planning permission, and the heritage covering still has to carry the load. We treat the planning route as part of the survey, settled before the design is drawn, working out early whether a roof is permitted development or needs an application, and choosing the array layout to suit. Our commercial process sets out how the survey, structural check and connection run in sequence, and our guides cover the consent questions a heritage roof raises before you commit to a scheme.
Beyond the mills and the wholesale belt, Bradford carries a large public-sector and institutional estate that is some of the best-matched roof stock in the district for on-site solar. Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust runs Bradford Royal Infirmary off Duckworth Lane and St Luke's Hospital south of the centre, serving a core population of around half a million, with sizeable acute roofs over a load that never really stops. The University of Bradford sits on its city-centre campus near Listerhills, and the council itself holds a broad estate of offices, depots, schools and leisure buildings across the district.
These buildings share a demand shape that suits self-consumption: a high, steady weekday load from lighting, ventilation, IT, catering and clinical or teaching plant that runs straight through the daylight hours an array generates in. The City of Culture 2025 programme has also drawn regeneration funding into the district, which tends to bring estate buildings into refurbishment cycles where a roof array can be designed in sensibly. We have not worked on these specific estates, and we make no claim to. We are pointing out that the institutional roof stock here is a strong fit, and the same engineering applies, from the sector load profile down to a G99 connection on a constrained Bradford primary.
How the team engineers rooftop solar for a football stadium, matching a large venue roof to an event-driven match-day load. A representative example of the team’s stadium work.
Read the case studyA representative large flat-roof distribution-centre array designed to a daytime logistics load, using half-hourly modelling, an in-house drone survey and an export-limited G99 design to maximise self-consumption.
Read the case studyLast updated June 2026
Not yet, and we say so openly. We are a Yorkshire-based commercial installer covering Bradford and the wider BD area, but we will not claim a local track record we do not have. What we offer is the engineering a system over 50 kWp needs: an in-house drone survey of your roof, a PV*SOL model built against your half-hourly load, a design to BS 7671 and a G99 connection to Northern Powergrid.
Often it can, but the roof decides, and on a converted mill that is the first thing we check. Brick-and-timber mill structures can carry lower structural loading than a modern shed, and the covering may be fragile or of heritage value. Our drone survey reads the roof in 3D without anyone walking it, and a structural assessment confirms what the roof can safely carry before any array is sized or specified.
It depends on where you connect. Northern Powergrid is the network operator here, and there are known capacity constraints on parts of the Bradford network, with the Manningham and Bradford South primaries among the tighter points. A constrained primary can limit how much export the network accepts, so we raise the G99 connection position early and, where an export limit looks likely, design to it from the start, including export limitation and battery storage where they improve the case.
Yes. We take on independent operation and maintenance of existing commercial arrays in the Bradford area, including older and FiT-era systems we did not install. The work is brand-agnostic and runs through our sister operation, Solar Tech Support, covering monitoring, cleaning, fault-finding and repair. We set out what an arrangement covers before you commit, rather than publishing a service-level promise we have not agreed with you.
We do not publish a price or a from-figure, because a system over 50 kWp is sized to your building rather than to a postcode. The cost comes out of the survey and the PV*SOL model: the usable roof area our drone captures, your half-hourly consumption, the inverter and mounting strategy, and on much of Bradford's converted-mill stock the structural and heritage-roofing position. A simple modern warehouse roof off Canal Road and a listed mill in a conservation area can reach very different figures for the same kWp once loading and planning are accounted for. The honest answer is that we survey the building, model the array against your real load, and quote from that, the same way wherever you are. There is no per-mile travel charge and no standard rate.
Quickly for the survey, because we are Yorkshire-based and Bradford is a short run, so booking an on-site drone survey is straightforward and the surveyor comes to you. The full programme, though, is set by the grid connection rather than by travel. A system over 50 kWp connects under a G99 application to Northern Powergrid, and on parts of the Bradford network, including the constrained Manningham and Bradford South primaries, that assessment is usually the longest single step and the one that sets the realistic timeline. We raise the connection position at survey and give you an honest sequence for your specific site rather than a fixed promise we cannot stand behind.
Wherever you are in the region, the on-site drone survey comes to you and the PV*SOL model sets the figure. Send us the site and the half-hourly load, and we will come back with a designed system.
