Alectrona
Use caseAn aggregator is the route to market. It pools your battery with many others into a virtual power plant big enough to reach markets a single site cannot, stacks the income across them, and pays you a share under a contract worth reading closely.
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.
A commercial battery can earn from the grid, but on its own it is too small to get in. Frequency response, the Balancing Mechanism, the Capacity Market and wholesale arbitrage are all built for fleets, not single sites, and each carries its own registration, metering and dispatch rules that would be heavy to carry alone. An aggregator solves that. It pools your battery with many others into a virtual power plant, qualifies the fleet, bids it into the markets it can reach, dispatches your battery when the system operator calls, and settles the money, passing you a share.
Access is only half of it. The other half is stacking. A good aggregator switches your battery between markets so it earns from the most valuable one at any moment, and keeps the capacity it has promised elsewhere honest. This page covers the intermediary and the contract, not the markets themselves. For the services your battery sells, see grid services; for one specific market, see the Capacity Market. Here we set out what an aggregator does, the revenue-share model to understand before you sign, and what to look for when you compare one against another.
Brand-agnostic: the bankable battery that fits the project.
An aggregator is an intermediary between your battery and the markets that pay for flexible power. It pools many batteries and flexible sites into a single fleet, often called a virtual power plant, that behaves to the grid like one large, controllable asset. That pooled scale is what gets you through the door. The system operator and the network markets are designed around fleets that can deliver a guaranteed volume of power on command, and a single commercial battery rarely clears the minimum on its own.
Inside that role the aggregator does the heavy lifting you would otherwise carry yourself. It registers and qualifies your battery against each market's technical rules, runs the telemetry and metering the system operator demands, places the bids, receives the dispatch instructions, and controls your battery's charge and discharge to honour them, within the limits your contract sets. It then settles the income and pays you a share. The markets it can reach for you typically include frequency response, the Balancing Mechanism, the Capacity Market and wholesale price arbitrage, though which of those a given battery qualifies for depends on its specification, its metering and its grid connection.
The thing that separates a good aggregator from a passive one is stacking. No single grid market pays the most at every hour of every day. Frequency response is valuable when the grid is volatile; the Balancing Mechanism pays when the system operator needs fast power to balance supply and demand; the Capacity Market pays a steadier amount for being available at peak; wholesale arbitrage rewards charging cheap and discharging dear. A capable aggregator optimises across all of them, moving your battery to whichever market is worth the most at that moment while keeping the commitments it has made elsewhere.
This is why the route matters as much as the markets. Two batteries of the same size, one with a sharp aggregator and one with a lazy one, can earn very differently. The optimisation runs through the control software on your side too, which is covered on the EMS software page.
Almost all aggregator agreements are revenue-share. The aggregator takes a percentage of what your battery earns and passes the rest to you. That headline percentage is the obvious term, but several others decide what the deal is actually worth, and they are where the surprises hide. Read them before you sign, and compare more than one aggregator, because the terms vary widely and the market is competitive.
None of this changes the honest position on the money. The income from an aggregator is variable, because it rests on auction outcomes, dispatch frequency, clearing prices and the share the aggregator keeps. We build your business case on the on-site savings, which are far steadier, size the battery from your half-hourly load for those jobs first, and treat the aggregator income as upside you would welcome but have not banked. The economics, including how an aggregator income layers on top, route to commercial finance and the ROI calculator, modelled from your survey rather than a slider.
Before any revenue conversation, the aggregator has to be able to register your asset. Eligibility is a technical question for the system operator and the network to decide, well before it becomes a commercial one for the aggregator. The National Energy System Operator (NESO) defines the service-by-service entry rules, and an asset has to meet the relevant requirements of the Grid Code and, for a distribution-connected battery, the Distribution Code before it can be enrolled. In Northern Powergrid's region the connection itself is governed by your G99 agreement, which sets the export and import limits the aggregator must dispatch within. A battery that can physically deliver more than its connection allows still cannot bid that headroom, so the connection terms are read first.
Metering is the second gate. Most grid services settle on half-hourly data from revenue-grade metering, and Ofgem's market-wide half-hourly settlement reforms have made accurate, granular metering the basis on which flexible assets are paid. The aggregator needs telemetry it can read in near real time and a metering arrangement the system operator will accept for settlement, which on a commercial site usually means CT-metered measurement at the point that matters. Ofgem's Wider Access reforms, which opened the Balancing Mechanism to smaller and aggregated providers, widened the door, but they did not remove the registration and baselining work behind it.
We assess all of this at survey, because it decides which markets are even reachable and therefore whether an aggregator route is worth pursuing for your site. The same half-hourly load study that sets the battery size for your on-site jobs, covered on the battery sizing page, tells us where the connection and metering will let an aggregator add a second income on top of the grid services the battery can sell. The capital side of that decision sits on the battery storage costs page.
Because the route matters as much as the markets, the aggregator is worth assessing as carefully as the hardware. Start with standing. Is the company licensed and active in the markets it claims, with a settlement track record under the Balancing and Settlement Code and a credible balance sheet behind any guarantee it offers? A revenue floor is only as good as the party promising it, so the counterparty's strength forms part of the term itself. Ask which markets it actually trades for assets like yours rather than which it lists, and ask for the basis of any modelled figure it quotes so you can see whether it rests on recent clearing prices or on an optimistic forward view. Any number that arrives without a disclosed basis should be treated as marketing.
Then read the exit. The Capacity Market commits an asset across a defined delivery year under the Capacity Market Rules, so a battery promised into it is tied for that period regardless of the revenue-share notice in your wider agreement. Frequency and balancing participation is usually more flexible, but the contract still sets the term, the exclusivity and the notice to leave. The practical questions are whether you can switch aggregator if a sharper route appears, what happens to in-flight market commitments when you do, and whether the optimisation runs through control software you retain or software locked to that provider. The EMS software page covers why retaining your own control layer protects your on-site jobs, such as the peak shaving that comes first in the business case. Whatever route you choose, we model the economics from your survey rather than a headline rate, and the commercial finance page sets out how an aggregator income, which remains variable, market-dependent and not promised, layers on top of the far steadier on-site savings.
The capital-allowances treatment of standalone battery storage is not settled in public HMRC guidance; confirm the position with your tax adviser.
It is the route to market. On your own, a single commercial battery is too small to bid into frequency response, the Balancing Mechanism or the Capacity Market, and you would have to carry the metering, telemetry and market rules yourself. An aggregator pools your battery with many others into a fleet large enough to qualify, registers and bids it into the markets it can reach, dispatches it when the system operator calls, and settles the money. It also stacks the value, switching the battery between markets so it earns from the most valuable one at any time. You receive a share of what it earns, under a contract you should read closely.
No, and treat any aggregator that promises a fixed figure with suspicion. The revenue depends on which markets your battery qualifies for, how often it is dispatched, the prices clearing in auctions and balancing actions at the time, and the share the aggregator keeps. Capacity Market payments are set at auction and run for a delivery year; frequency response and Balancing Mechanism income move constantly. Some contracts offer a floor or a guaranteed minimum, but that is a commercial term to weigh, not a law of physics. We build your case on the on-site savings, which are far steadier, and treat the aggregator income as variable upside.
Most are revenue-share: the aggregator takes a percentage of what your battery earns and passes the rest to you, with the split, the length of the term, the notice period and who controls dispatch all set in the contract. Watch the points that bite later, the share itself and whether it is taken before or after costs, the contract length and any exclusivity, the notice to leave, how much of the battery's capacity the aggregator can call and how often, and who carries the penalty if a called event is missed. Cycling caps matter too, because dispatch adds cycles to the battery and you want that kept inside the maker's warranty.
Those pages cover the destinations; this one covers the road. The grid services page explains the services a battery sells, frequency response and demand-side flexibility. The Capacity Market page covers one specific market and its T-1 and T-4 auctions. An aggregator is the intermediary that gets your battery into those markets and stacks the income across them. You generally need one to reach any of them at commercial scale, so it is worth understanding the route as well as the markets it leads to.
It can, because dispatch adds cycles, which is one reason we treat the income as upside rather than the core case. We size the battery from your half-hourly load for the on-site jobs first, then look at whether aggregator participation fits within the maker's warranty and operating terms, and we look for cycling limits in the contract that keep it there. Where it fits, you gain a second income; where it would eat the warranty or the on-site savings, we leave it out. The control software that makes the trade-off is covered on the EMS software page.
Aggregator access is almost always taken as a revenue share rather than an upfront fee, so the cost is the percentage of market income the aggregator keeps, set in your contract. The battery and its connection are the priced items, and those are survey-led with no standard figure; see battery storage costs or commercial solar cost. Any net return from the route is modelled, market-dependent and not promised, and we build your case on the steadier on-site savings.
Earning follows two timelines. First the battery is installed and commissioned as part of the wider project, on the schedule set out on the commercial process page. Then the aggregator registers, meters and prequalifies the asset against the system operator's rules, which takes weeks and, for the Capacity Market, aligns to a defined delivery year rather than starting on demand. We set realistic dates at survey. Any revenue from that point is modelled, market-dependent and not promised.
We model your half-hourly load and your solar against a battery sized from an on-site survey, so the figure you get is yours, not a from-price. Capex first, with the bankable brand that fits the project.