Alectrona
Commercial solar by areaWe are Yorkshire-based and quick to your site, covering Castleford and the Five Towns for commercial solar over 50 kWp. We have not yet installed in Castleford, so we are upfront that our case rests on coverage, an on-site drone survey and a system modelled against your own half-hourly load, not a local job count we cannot show you.
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.
Castleford reinvented itself once before. The coal, glass, chemical and confectionery works that defined the town for a century have mostly closed, and in their place sit rail-connected distribution sheds, large-format retail and the factory roofs of its remaining manufacturers. Those are big, daytime-hungry buildings, and a rooftop array over 50 kWp is well suited to the load underneath them. At that scale the system is an engineered asset rather than a domestic install, so it earns the detail we put in: a measured 3D survey, a design to BS 7671 and a G99 connection to the local network.
To be straight with you, we hold no completed jobs in Castleford. What we bring is the coverage to reach you quickly from Yorkshire, an in-house insured drone pilot who flies your actual roof, and a PV*SOL model built around how your site really uses power through the working day. We cover the WF10 core and the WF11 fringe towards Knottingley and Ferrybridge, alongside Pontefract, Normanton, Glasshoughton and Allerton Bywater, from the same base.
Castleford's commercial roofs sit in three layers, and each one drives a different solar case. The largest is logistics. Wakefield Europort, a couple of miles west towards Normanton off Junction 31 of the M62, is a rail-connected intermodal estate whose terminal handles deep-sea container traffic alongside its warehousing, and the newer stock there shows where the building type is heading. Switch490 on California Drive (WF10 5QH), a cross-docked logistics warehouse of around 490,000 square feet, was built to a net-zero carbon and BREEAM Excellent standard with EV charging and a photovoltaic-ready roof. That is a vast, unbroken membrane over an operation running lighting, conveyors, charging fleets and refrigeration through the working day, which is exactly the demand profile that lets a well-sized array be consumed on site rather than exported.
The second layer is the town's manufacturing base, both live and inherited. Teva UK runs a sterile-liquid manufacturing facility together with its UK commercial headquarters and a logistics centre on Whistler Drive in WF10 5HX, the kind of pharmaceutical and distribution roof that carries a steady, daytime-dominated process load. Around it sits the inheritance: Castleford grew on glassmaking, with the country's first semi-automatic bottle machine installed here in 1887 and bottle production running into the early 1980s, alongside chemicals, liquorice and confectionery and the collieries. That past left a stock of substantial factory roofs, including the apparel works at Burberry on Albion Street and the former Nestle confectionery presence. We name those last two as building stock rather than asserting their current occupancy, which is for you to confirm; what they tell you is the type of large, flat-and-low-pitch factory roof the WF10 trading estates hold, where a structural read of the original purlins and decks comes before any array is sized.
The third layer is retail and leisure at Glasshoughton, in the south of the town off the A639 near Junction 32 of the M62. The Junction 32 outlet shopping village on Tomahawk Trail and the neighbouring Xscape leisure complex are large-format floorplates with steady lighting and HVAC demand, both served by Glasshoughton railway station on the line through to Leeds, Wakefield and Sheffield. Across all three layers the value comes from using generation on site at the price you would otherwise pay to import, so we model each building's real half-hourly consumption before sizing anything.
The survey that anchors every design travels to Castleford exactly as it does anywhere in Yorkshire. Our own insured drone pilot, qualified to A2 CofC and GVC, flies your roof and builds a measured 3D model of the real surface: parapets, plant, rooflights, shading and the true usable area. On the town's large logistics membranes a few degrees of pitch or a run of rooflights changes the layout, so the design starts from what the drone records on the day rather than a satellite estimate.
That model and your half-hourly consumption data then feed a PV*SOL simulation, which is what turns a Europort shed or a Glasshoughton retail roof into a designed system with a generation and self-consumption figure you can put in front of a board. The pilot comes to you whether the site is off Junction 31 of the M62, on a WF10 trading estate or down towards the Ferrybridge fringe.
The distribution network operator for Castleford is Northern Powergrid, and any system over 50 kWp connects under a G99 application to them before it energises. For the large flat-roof arrays common on the Europort and Junction 32 estates, the G99 process is where the export position is settled, and on many of these sites we apply an export limitation so the design fits the available connection without waiting on a network reinforcement. We run the application and the network correspondence as part of the project rather than leaving it with you.
We do not assert a named constrained primary for Castleford, because the local fact pack gives none and we will not invent one. The honest position is that headroom is assessed site by site against Northern Powergrid's network for the actual point of connection, and that assessment is part of the survey. Where a high, steady daytime load means most of the generation is consumed behind the meter, as it is on a logistics or process roof such as the Whistler Drive pharmaceutical site, the export side of the G99 case eases and the economics improve at the same time.
The Castleford and wider Five Towns corridor also holds a real maintenance opportunity, because a number of the arrays on the older estate and factory roofs around the town date from the Feed-in Tariff build-out and are now well into their working life, often with no single party clearly accountable for them. Through our sister operation Solar Tech Support we provide independent, brand-agnostic operations and maintenance and take over systems whether or not the original installer is still trading, whatever badge is on the panels and inverters. That means inspection, monitoring, fault-finding and repair on a system we did not build, reported honestly on what we find.
We do not publish a fixed response-time promise we cannot yet stand behind for Castleford specifically. What we will do is assess the existing array on site, give you a clear read on what it is producing against what it should, and agree a maintenance scope in writing that suits your downtime tolerance, so an ageing system on a WF10 estate keeps earning rather than quietly degrading.
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
Yes. We are Yorkshire-based and cover Castleford and the surrounding Five Towns, including Pontefract, Normanton, Glasshoughton, Knottingley and Ferrybridge, for commercial solar over 50 kWp. We have not completed an install in Castleford yet, so we are honest that our case for your project rests on coverage, the on-site drone survey and a PV*SOL design rather than a local track record.
The large flat-roof logistics sheds around Wakefield Europort and Junction 31 of the M62, the pharmaceutical and factory roofs on the WF10 trading estates such as the Whistler Drive process and logistics site, and the large-format retail and leisure roofs at Junction 32 and Xscape in Glasshoughton. These carry steady daytime demand from lighting, plant, charging and HVAC, which lets a well-sized array be consumed on site rather than exported.
The distribution network operator for Castleford is Northern Powergrid, and any system over 50 kWp connects under a G99 application to them. We handle that application and the network correspondence as part of the project, and on larger arrays we commonly apply an export limitation so the design fits the available connection. There is no town-wide constraint we would claim; export headroom is assessed for each specific point of connection.
Yes. Through Solar Tech Support we provide independent, brand-agnostic operations and maintenance and take over systems built by other installers, including FiT-era arrays on the older estates and factory roofs around the town where the original installer may no longer be contactable. We inspect, monitor, fault-find and repair, assess the array on site first, and report honestly on what we find rather than quoting a fixed promise sight unseen.
We do not publish a from-price, because an honest figure for a system over 50 kWp can only come out of the survey, not a per-mile rate or a rule of thumb on roof area. The cost of a Castleford array turns on the usable roof we measure from the drone model, the structural read of the deck and purlins, the inverter and any export-limitation or storage strategy, and the G99 connection terms for your specific point of connection. We feed those into a PV*SOL model built around your own half-hourly consumption, so what you get back is a designed system with a generation and self-consumption figure you can put in front of a board, costed against what it actually offsets. A Europort logistics shed, a Whistler Drive process roof and a Junction 32 retail floorplate each land in a different place, which is exactly why we price from the survey rather than a headline number. The survey and model carry no obligation to proceed.
Quickly, because we are Yorkshire-based and Castleford sits within easy reach off the M62 corridor, whether the site is on a WF10 trading estate, out towards Europort at Junction 31, down at Glasshoughton near Junction 32 or on the WF11 fringe towards Ferrybridge. The drone survey comes to you on the same terms as anywhere we cover, our own insured pilot flying your actual roof. The honest part is what sets the overall programme: it is the G99 connection to Northern Powergrid that paces the job, not our travel time. Once the survey and PV*SOL design are agreed, the application and the network correspondence run alongside the structural and electrical design, and the energisation date depends on Northern Powergrid's response and any conditions on the connection for that point of supply. We manage that process as part of the project and keep you informed on realistic timing, rather than promising a date the network has not yet confirmed.
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.
