Alectrona
Commercial solar by areaLeeds is our operating base, with our registered office in the LS1 city core. From here we design commercial solar over 50 kWp for the warehousing, industrial and public-sector roofs along the M621 and M1. We have not completed an install in Leeds yet, so we lead with an on-site drone survey and a system modelled against your own load.
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.
Leeds holds one of the largest concentrations of flat-roof commercial space in the North, and most of it sits over a daytime electrical load that rooftop solar is well suited to offset. For a system above 50 kWp, the engineering has to earn its place: the array is modelled against your half-hourly consumption, designed to BS 7671, and connected under a G99 application to the local network. That is the work that decides whether a roof pays back, and it is the work we do before anyone quotes a figure.
Our base is in the LS1 city core, so we reach Leeds sites quickly, out to the LS9 to LS12 industrial belt and the LS25 to LS26 distribution parks towards Garforth and Rothwell. Being based in the city does not buy us a track record we have not earned: we have not yet completed an installation in Leeds, so this page makes no claim of a local job history. What we bring is coverage of the area, the capability to engineer a large commercial array, and an in-house insured drone pilot who surveys the actual roof before any design is drawn.
Leeds is defined by its warehousing. The M621 ring carries the single largest cluster of flat-roof distribution sheds in the North, with the M1 J44 to J47 corridor and the M62 J26 to J29 quarter around Tingley and Gildersome adding to it. The large logistics parks at Logic Leeds and Skelton Lake describe the building stock here rather than our customers: big, lightly-shaded roofs running plant, conveyors, chargers and lighting through the working day.
Leeds is urban, so there is little agricultural roof stock here; genuine farm-scale enquiries we point to the Wakefield and Selby fringe to the south. Wherever a unit is let, we model the building's actual half-hourly consumption rather than assume it.
Every Leeds design starts with an on-site survey rather than a satellite guess. Our in-house drone pilot, insured and qualified to A2 CofC and GVC standard, flies the roof to build a 3D model of the real surface: parapets, plant, rooflights, shading and the true usable area. That model feeds a PV*SOL simulation run against your half-hourly load, so the system is sized to what the building actually uses.
The survey travels to Leeds exactly as it does anywhere in Yorkshire. Whether the roof is a single M621 distribution shed or a row of sub-divided units in Hunslet, the pilot comes to you and the design is built from what the drone records on the day.
The local distribution network operator for Leeds is Northern Powergrid, and any system above 50 kWp connects under a G99 application. Leeds is one to plan early: the city's primary substations are generally constrained, and Northern Powergrid recommends pre-application advice for larger systems and frequently requires an export limitation, applied in practice as a G100 device, so the site exports nothing or only an agreed amount to a busy grid.
That constraint is not a reason to install less. A system sized and limited to be consumed on site can still cover a large share of a Leeds warehouse or institutional load, and modelling against your half-hourly data is what proves the right size before the G99 paperwork is lodged. We handle the application and the export-limitation engineering as part of the design.
We also take on the running of systems we did not install, across Leeds and the wider West Yorkshire belt, through our sister operation Solar Tech Support. That work is brand-agnostic: monitoring, fault-finding, inverter and string diagnostics, cleaning and performance checks on commercial arrays whatever badge is on the kit.
Many of the earliest commercial roofs in Leeds date from the Feed-in Tariff years and are now reaching the age where the original installer has moved on or the maintenance has lapsed. We can take those systems over, assess what is actually generating against what it should be, and put a straightforward service arrangement in place. We do not publish a fixed service-level promise we cannot stand behind; the scope is agreed against the site once we have seen it.
Much of the building stock this page describes sits inside one planning footprint. The Aire Valley Leeds Area Action Plan covers around 1,300 hectares to the south-east of the city centre, taking in both banks of the River Aire from the core out to the M1, and it carries the Leeds City Region Enterprise Zone. Cross Green and the Stourton corridor together form one of the largest contiguous industrial areas in the region, much of it under the broad, lightly-shaded roofs a large array suits.
South Bank adds the office half: new-build floorplates carrying plant, lighting and HVAC loads through the working day. Whichever roof it is, the design question is the same: model the building's real half-hourly consumption, then size to it. Our offices and landlords page sets out how the split between landlord-owned roof and tenant load shapes a system above 50 kWp.
For most Leeds commercial roofs a rooftop array falls under permitted development, but above 50 kWp the building owner must first apply to Leeds City Council for a determination on whether prior approval of the array's design and external appearance is required, and we lodge that application as part of the design stage. The array must sit within the host building's curtilage and stay inside the physical roof-mounting limits in Part 14 Class J. Some schemes need a full planning application instead:
Leeds City Council declared a climate emergency in 2019 and carries a 2030 carbon-neutral target, so the policy backdrop is supportive, but the route depends on the building. We confirm the planning position as part of the survey, and our process pages set out how survey, design and connection fit together.
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 July 2026
There is no Leeds price list, and we will not quote a per-kWp or from-price for the city. The figure comes from the survey and the PV*SOL model: your building's half-hourly load, the usable roof area our drone records on the day, and the connection terms Northern Powergrid sets, including any export limitation. We survey the roof, model the system against your real consumption, and put a figure in front of you that the design supports.
The survey is quick to arrange: our base is in the LS1 city core, so a Leeds roof is barely a trip at all. The programme as a whole is governed by the grid rather than by travel. Above 50 kWp the timeline depends on the G99 application to Northern Powergrid, and Leeds primary substations are commonly constrained, so we start the connection work early and run it in parallel with the design.
Not yet, and we are honest about that. Our registered office is in Leeds city centre at LS1 3AJ, so we are genuinely local here, but being based in the city is not the same as a track record: we have not completed an installation in Leeds, and we make no claim of one. Every design starts with an on-site drone survey and a system modelled against your own half-hourly load.
The distribution network operator for Leeds is Northern Powergrid, and any system over 50 kWp connects under a G99 application. Leeds primary substations are generally constrained, so Northern Powergrid recommends pre-application engagement for larger systems and often requires an export limitation, applied as a G100 device. We handle the application and the export-limitation design.
The flat-roof warehousing along the M621 and M1, the multi-occupier industrial units around Hunslet, Stourton and Temple Green, and the larger institutional roofs such as the University and NHS estate. These carry steady weekday loads, which lets a well-sized array be consumed on site rather than exported to a constrained grid.
Yes. Through our sister operation Solar Tech Support we run independent, brand-agnostic operations and maintenance and take over older systems, including Feed-in Tariff-era arrays whose original installer has moved on. We assess the site first and agree the service scope against what we find, rather than quote a fixed promise sight unseen.
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.
