Alectrona
Commercial solar by areaAlectrona is a Yorkshire-based commercial solar installer working across Huddersfield and the wider Kirklees area for systems over 50 kWp. We have not yet installed in Huddersfield, so we lead with the on-site survey and the engineering, not a local job count.
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.
Huddersfield carries the highest manufacturing GVA density in West Yorkshire, and very little of that roof area is yet generating its own power. Alectrona is a Yorkshire-based commercial solar installer working the HD1 to HD5 districts and out to Brighouse, Mirfield, Slaithwaite and Halifax, for rooftop and ground-mount systems over 50 kWp.
A system at this scale earns the engineering behind it. Our own insured pilot flies a 3D drone survey of your roof, we take your half-hourly consumption data, and the array is modelled in PV*SOL against your real load before anything is priced. We are quick to your Huddersfield site from base, and we are honest that this is coverage and capability rather than a list of finished local installs.
Huddersfield's commercial load is unusually heavy for its size. The town's industrial base is built on chemicals and precision engineering, the sort of process plant that draws power steadily through the working day rather than in domestic peaks. Around Longwood Edge and the chemical belt, and across the precision engineering and food-processing units that fill the district, the demand shape is a near-ideal match for on-site solar, because the generation lands in the same daytime hours the plant is already paying for. The economics here come from self-consumption, displacing imported units against a high, flat daytime baseload, not from exporting cheaply to the grid.
The building stock backs this up. The Leeds Road and Bradley industrial estates carry the larger modern sheds, with the deck area and the roof loading that a substantial array needs. Skelmanthorpe and the converted textile mills add a stock of older, flat and low-pitch roofs where a structural survey matters as much as the electrical design. Down the Colne Valley towards Slaithwaite and Marsden sit the smaller independent manufacturers, businesses with their own steady process loads and, in many cases, ageing solar from the FiT years that is now under-performing.
This is the heart of the local positioning. Huddersfield is a dense manufacturing cluster that has been poorly served by commercial solar specialists, and the household names that describe the area's chemical and engineering economy are context for the kind of site here, not clients of ours. We size to the load shape of the actual building, whether that is a Bradley estate shed or a Colne Valley mill.
The on-site survey travels to Huddersfield exactly as it does anywhere in Yorkshire. Our own insured pilot, holding an A2 CofC and a GVC, flies a 3D drone survey of your roof, and the array is modelled in PV*SOL against your half-hourly load. A system over 50 kWp is too large to design from a desktop estimate, so we come to the site, whether that is a Leeds Road shed or a mill up the Colne Valley.
The Distribution Network Operator for Huddersfield is Northern Powergrid, and a commercial array over 50 kWp connects under a G99 application that Northern Powergrid assesses against the capacity of your local network. We handle that application and the technical correspondence as part of the project, rather than handing it to you.
On a manufacturing site with a heavy, self-consumed daytime load, the connection is often more straightforward than the headline kWp suggests, because much of the generation never leaves the building. Where the network needs it, an export limitation scheme can be applied so the system serves your own demand without the full export the grid would otherwise have to accept. We confirm the right approach for your site at survey, before any commitment.
The Colne Valley and the older mill stock around Huddersfield hold a real number of FiT-era arrays that are now a decade or more old, often left without proper support after the firm that fitted them moved on. Through Solar Tech Support we take over and maintain existing commercial systems brand-agnostically, whoever installed them and whatever the panels and inverters are, with monitoring, fault-finding and repair to keep an ageing asset earning.
This is honest, ongoing O&M, not a fixed promise we cannot back with a local track record yet. We will tell you what condition a system is in after we have looked at it, and what it would take to bring it back to where it should be.
Huddersfield sits inside the Kirklees Metropolitan Borough, so the planning authority for a rooftop or ground-mount array here is Kirklees Council rather than a parish or district office. For most roof-mounted commercial solar on an existing industrial building the work falls within permitted development rights, but the test turns on roof height, listed status and whether the site is in a conservation area, which is a real consideration on the converted mill stock in the town centre and up the Colne Valley. A ground-mount scheme, or panels on a listed or conservation-area building, needs a full application, and we frame which route a site falls under as part of the survey rather than leaving you to find out later.
The forward-looking picture matters too. The Kirklees Local Plan allocates major new employment land north and east of Huddersfield, at Cooper Bridge by the M62 and along the corridor towards Lindley Moor and junction 25, with the Cooper Bridge gyratory scheme improving access to junctions 24 and 25. That is where the next generation of large distribution and manufacturing sheds will land, the broad, lightly loaded modern roofs that suit a clean array. If you are building or fitting out on one of those plots, designing the solar in alongside the build and connection programme is far cheaper than a retrofit. Our warehousing and logistics work is built for exactly this M62-corridor roof stock.
Beyond the chemical belt and the engineering units, Huddersfield carries a substantial institutional estate that runs a heavy, predictable weekday load, which is among the strongest cases for self-consumption solar. The University of Huddersfield occupies a dense town-centre campus along the Huddersfield Narrow Canal, with lecture, laboratory and library buildings drawing power straight through teaching hours. Huddersfield Royal Infirmary at Lindley, part of the Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust, runs the round-the-clock electrical demand typical of an acute hospital. Add the Kirklees Council estate, the leisure centres and the schools across the borough, and there is a public-roof stock whose load shape matches daytime generation closely.
These estates often sit on larger, flatter roofs than the average industrial unit, and they frequently come with sustainability or net-zero commitments that make on-site generation a board-level priority rather than a nice-to-have. A system over 50 kWp on a campus or hospital roof is a structural and electrical project that has to be modelled against half-hourly metered demand and connected under G99, which is exactly the engineering we run. We have not installed on any of these sites and make no claim to, but the load profiles are real and well matched, and our commercial solar guides set out how a system of this size is scoped, financed and connected.
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 a Yorkshire-based commercial solar installer covering Huddersfield and the HD1 to HD5 districts, out to Brighouse, Mirfield, Slaithwaite and Halifax, for systems over 50 kWp. We have not yet completed an install in Huddersfield itself, so we are upfront that this is coverage and capability rather than a local job count. The on-site drone survey and the engineering come to your site regardless.
Huddersfield has the highest manufacturing GVA density in West Yorkshire, built on chemicals and precision engineering. Those plants draw a steady, high daytime load, which is the ideal shape for on-site solar, because the generation lands in the same hours the site is already paying for power. The return comes from self-consumption against that baseload, not from exporting to the grid.
The DNO for Huddersfield is Northern Powergrid. A system over 50 kWp connects under a G99 application that Northern Powergrid assesses against your local network capacity. We prepare and manage that application and the technical correspondence as part of the project. Where the network needs it, an export limitation scheme can keep a large array serving your own demand.
Yes. Through Solar Tech Support we maintain and take over existing commercial systems brand-agnostically, whoever installed them. The Colne Valley and the older mill stock hold a number of FiT-era arrays that have lost support, and we offer monitoring, fault-finding and repair to keep them earning. We assess the system on site first and tell you honestly what condition it is in.
The honest answer is that the figure comes from the survey and the PV*SOL model, not from a per-kilowatt price or a from-figure we could quote on a web page. A system over 50 kWp on a Bradley estate shed, a Colne Valley mill or a hospital roof is sized to that building's half-hourly demand, its roof structure and its grid position, and any of those can move the cost materially. We fly an on-site drone survey, model the array against your real load and design to BS 7671 before pricing, so the number reflects your roof rather than a template. The approach is the same wherever we work in Yorkshire, and the survey itself is what turns a rough idea into a costed, load-matched design.
The survey comes to you quickly because we are Yorkshire-based, so reaching an HD1 to HD5 site, or out to Brighouse, Mirfield and Slaithwaite, is a short run rather than a long haul, and booking a drone survey here is straightforward. The overall programme, though, is set by the G99 connection rather than travel time. Once the design is agreed we submit the G99 application to Northern Powergrid, and their assessment of your local network capacity is usually the longest single step, ahead of procurement and the install itself. We give you a realistic timeline at survey based on the actual site and the connection position, 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.
