Alectrona
Commercial solar by areaWe are Yorkshire-based and quick to your site, covering Wakefield and the Five Towns for commercial solar over 50 kWp. We have not yet installed in Wakefield, so we lead with what we can show you now: coverage, an on-site drone survey and a system modelled against your own half-hourly 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.
Wakefield sits at the centre of one of the densest logistics and distribution corridors in the North, and the roofs that come with it are large, flat and electrically hungry. A system over 50 kWp on that kind of building is an engineered asset rather than a domestic install, so it earns the detail we put into it: a measured 3D survey, a design to BS 7671 and a G99 connection to the local network. That is the work this page describes, and it is the same work whether your unit is off Junction 31 of the M62 or on an older estate inside the WF ring.
To be straight with you, we have no completed jobs in Wakefield yet. What we bring is the coverage to reach you fast 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 across the day.
Wakefield's commercial roof stock splits into two distinct shapes, and each one drives a different solar case. The first is the new logistics estate: Wakefield Europort off Junction 31 of the M62 is one of the largest distribution parks in the North, with flat-roof sheds running from around 50,000 to over 200,000 square feet. These are exactly the buildings solar is built for, with vast unbroken membrane roofs and a daytime electrical load dominated by lighting, conveyors, battery-charging fleets and, increasingly, refrigeration. Distribution operations of this kind run their consumption through the working day, which is when a south-facing array generates, so self-consumption tends to be high and the export question stays manageable.
The second shape is Wakefield's older industrial inheritance. The district's coal-mining and manufacturing past left a stock of low-pitch and flat-roofed post-war factory units spread across Normanton, Altofts, Castleford and the WF core, including estates such as Calder Park, Trinity Park and the Prince of Wales site towards the Five Towns. These roofs need a careful structural read before anything goes on them, because the original purlins and decks were never designed with a ballasted array in mind. Then there is the retail and leisure load at Junction 32 Glasshoughton, where large flat-roof retail and leisure floorplates carry the kind of steady lighting and HVAC demand that pairs well with on-site generation.
The firms occupying these corridors describe the local economy and the building stock; they are not our customers, and we make no claim that they are. They matter here only because they tell you the type of site we design for in this district.
The survey that anchors every design travels to Wakefield 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 it, so the array is drawn from real geometry rather than a satellite estimate. That model and your half-hourly consumption data then feed a PV*SOL simulation, which is what turns a large WF roof into a designed system with a generation and self-consumption figure you can put in front of a board.
The distribution network operator for Wakefield is Northern Powergrid, and any system over 50 kWp connects under a G99 application to them. For the large flat-roof arrays common on the Europort and Junction 32 estates, the G99 process is where export is agreed, and on many commercial 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.
The Wakefield corridor also holds a real maintenance opportunity, because a good number of the arrays on the older Europort and district estates date from the FiT-era build-out and are now well into their working life, often with no single party clearly accountable for them. Through Solar Tech Support we offer independent, brand-agnostic operations and maintenance, and we take over systems whether or not the original installer is still trading. That means inspection, fault-finding, monitoring 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 Wakefield specifically. What we will do is agree a maintenance scope in writing that suits your site and your downtime tolerance, and be candid about what an older array can and cannot be expected to deliver.
For a roof-mounted array on an existing commercial building, the planning picture in Wakefield is usually more straightforward than owners expect. The local planning authority is Wakefield Council, a metropolitan district that covers the city and the Five Towns out to Pontefract, Castleford, Normanton and Knottingley, and most rooftop solar on a non-domestic building falls within permitted development rather than needing a full application. That changes where the building is listed or sits in a conservation area, and parts of central Wakefield around the cathedral and the older town carry those designations, so the survey checks the constraint before the design is fixed.
Ground-mount and any structurally significant work are a different matter and need the planning route taken properly. Wakefield's adopted local plan actively pushes employment land and low-carbon development around the M62 and M1 corridors, which is the same logistics belt the array stock sits on, so a well-evidenced commercial scheme tends to sit with the grain of policy rather than against it. We treat the planning and building-control position as part of the engineering work, flagged at survey, and we set out what your specific site needs in the written scope. The detail of how that runs alongside the design and connection is covered on our commercial process pages.
Alongside the logistics sheds and the older factory stock, Wakefield carries a substantial public-sector and institutional estate that is easy to overlook and well suited to on-site generation. As one of the larger metropolitan districts in the North, the area holds council buildings, leisure centres, schools and colleges, a major NHS acute hospital at Pinderfields and a spread of community health sites, all of them buildings with broad roofs and a steady daytime electrical load that runs through term time and working hours. That demand shape is close to the ideal case for self-consumption, because the generation lands in the same hours the building is already paying for power.
We make no claim to a contract with any public body in Wakefield; we have not installed here yet, and the institutional estate is described as context for the kind of roof we design for, not as a client list. What it does signal is the breadth of large-roof, daytime-load sites across the district beyond the obvious distribution parks. Schools, colleges and care settings each carry their own procurement and access constraints, which is why the survey and the written scope matter, and we set out how we approach those sectors on our commercial sectors pages.
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 Wakefield and the surrounding Five Towns, including Normanton, Castleford, Pontefract and Glasshoughton, for commercial solar over 50 kWp. We have not completed an install in Wakefield 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.
We focus on commercial systems over 50 kWp, which is the scale of the flat-roof distribution sheds around Junction 31 of the M62 and the larger industrial and retail units across the district. A system this size sits outside the domestic certification regime, so the engineering design to BS 7671 and the G99 connection are the real deliverables.
The distribution network operator for Wakefield is Northern Powergrid, and your system 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.
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 around Europort and the wider district where the original installer may no longer be contactable. We inspect, monitor, fault-find and repair, and report honestly on what we find.
There is no honest per-roof or from-price figure we can quote before we have seen your building, and we will not invent one. A commercial system over 50 kWp is engineered to your roof and your load, so the cost follows the design: the usable roof area and its condition, the structural read on an older Normanton or Castleford factory deck, the inverter and mounting strategy, the G99 connection terms from Northern Powergrid, and whether storage or export limitation forms part of the scheme. The figure comes from the on-site drone survey and the PV*SOL model built against your half-hourly consumption, not from a per-mile rate or a headline price. Wakefield is treated exactly as anywhere else in Yorkshire: we measure the roof properly, model it against your real demand, then put a costed design in front of you.
We are Yorkshire-based, so a survey in Wakefield is a short run rather than a long haul, and the on-site drone survey comes to you wherever your unit sits, whether that is off Junction 31 of the M62, on the Calder Park or Trinity Park estates, or out towards Junction 32 at Glasshoughton. Booking a survey is usually a matter of days. The overall programme, though, is set by the G99 connection to Northern Powergrid rather than by travel distance: their assessment of your local network capacity, and any export position or limitation agreed, is normally what governs the timeline on a system this size. We run that application and the network correspondence as part of the project and keep you informed of where it sits, rather than handing it over.
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.
