Alectrona
BESS brandSolarEdge is the established, publicly listed maker in our storage line-up: its Commercial Storage System and 50 kW battery inverter pair a familiar optimised-inverter platform with a named product warranty, sized to your site.
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.
SolarEdge Technologies is a long-standing, publicly listed manufacturer of solar inverters and energy storage, best known for the optimised inverter platform that built its name across commercial and residential solar. For a finance or facilities director weighing who stands behind the kit, it is one of the most established and lender-familiar names in our battery line-up, and that track record counts when a system has to be supported across a long asset life.
For commercial storage, Alectrona supplies the SolarEdge Commercial Storage System paired with its 50 kW battery inverter. The figures below are the available range, not a quote: the system you get is sized from an on-site survey of your half-hourly load and your solar. We are brand-agnostic, so we specify SolarEdge where it is the right fit and confirm the current product and warranty with you before contract.
Engineer-led, assured to the non-MCS standard (CDM 2015).
The SolarEdge commercial storage offering is built around two parts that work as a system. The first is the Commercial Storage System, a pre-assembled battery cabinet for indoor or outdoor installation. The second is the 50 kW commercial battery inverter, the power conversion system that charges and discharges the cabinet, sitting on the AC side of your supply.
In the configurations Alectrona can supply, the 50 kW inverter pairs with one or two battery cabinets, giving roughly 102 to 204 kWh of storage at a single inverter. The cabinet charges from surplus solar or from cheap grid import and discharges when power is expensive or your demand is peaking. On larger sites the platform is designed to scale beyond a single cabinet, with the exact configuration set by the survey rather than picked from a shelf.
SolarEdge sits comfortably across the mid-range of commercial storage. The 50 kW inverter and its cabinet suit a single industrial unit, a warehouse, a school or a multi-let site that wants to lift solar self-consumption, trim peak-rate import and shave demand peaks, then add a second cabinet or a further inverter as the load grows.
It is a natural choice where a site already runs, or plans to run, a SolarEdge inverter platform, because the storage integrates with the same optimised-inverter ecosystem and monitoring. As an AC-coupled system it also retrofits cleanly to an existing array, where the solar side does not need to change. We make the AC-versus-DC coupling decision per project, and we will tell you honestly when a different maker fits your site better.
Of the makers in our line-up, SolarEdge is among the most established and lender-familiar: a publicly listed company with a long manufacturing track record in inverters and storage, and a named product warranty on its commercial battery system. That standing matters to a lender or an internal capital committee assessing who will be there to honour the warranty over the asset's life.
We do not dress that up with a tier label the brand does not formally hold. What we do is concrete: before you sign, we confirm the current product, the published warranty terms and the manufacturer support that applies to your configuration, and we check that the bankability fits how your project is being financed. The warranty position and product spec are confirmed from the manufacturer's current documentation at contract, not quoted from memory.
SolarEdge is one option, never a default. We start from your half-hourly consumption, your solar profile and the job the battery has to do, then size the power rating in kilowatts and the storage in kilowatt-hours from that, not from a per-kWh rule of thumb. Where SolarEdge is the right answer, we specify the cabinet count and inverter to suit, and we confirm the live warranty and product details before contract.
The system is engineered to the same standard as the rest of the installation: wired to BS 7671, verified to IEC 62446-1, declared to your Distribution Network Operator under G99 where required, and delivered under CDM 2015. There is no MCS involved on a system this size; the assurance is the engineering stack, signed off by a qualified supervisor. Alectrona specifies the battery that fits the project, the scale and your risk appetite, with the current product and warranty confirmed before contract.
Three SolarEdge characteristics decide the engineering on a commercial install, and they sit beyond the cabinet figures. The first is the optimised-inverter heritage: where the site already runs SolarEdge power optimisers on the PV array, the storage and the solar report into one platform, so the system sees panel-level data and the battery's charge logic works against generation it can see clearly. The second is that the Commercial Storage System is an AC-coupled product, which means the 50 kW battery inverter sits on the AC side and does not have to share a DC bus with the solar inverter. That keeps a retrofit clean, because the existing array and its inverters are left in place. The third is the LFP (lithium iron phosphate) cell choice, the chemistry the commercial market has converged on for its thermal stability and long cycle life, declared on the datasheet at 6,000 cycles to 70% state of health under a 10-year product warranty.
Those three together are why we either lead with SolarEdge or move past it. Where the array is already SolarEdge, the integration argument is strong. Where it is a mixed or third-party array, the AC coupling still lets it retrofit cleanly, but then the choice is decided on the merits against the other makers in our line-up rather than on platform loyalty. We make the AC-versus-DC coupling call per project, and the battery sizing follows the survey model rather than the platform badge.
A commercial battery cabinet is a notifiable electrical installation that has to be designed, protected and inspected to fixed standards, and those standards are the same whichever brand sits inside. The SolarEdge Commercial Storage System is wired and protected to BS 7671 (the IET Wiring Regulations) and verified to IEC 62446-1, the standard for commissioning and inspecting grid-connected systems. The cells and the battery system are built to the international BESS safety standards, IEC 62619 for industrial lithium cells and IEC 62933 for the electrical energy storage system, with the cabinet's stationary-battery and fire behaviour falling under the framework that BS EN and NFPA 855 set for energy storage installations. None of that is a SolarEdge claim; it is the engineering stack the cabinet has to satisfy, and we verify it from the manufacturer's current documentation at contract.
On a system over 50 kWp there is no MCS scheme in play, so the assurance is that documented stack signed off by a qualified supervisor, plus the connection paperwork. The export and storage connection is declared to your Distribution Network Operator under Engineering Recommendation G99, and on Alectrona's patch that operator is Northern Powergrid across Yorkshire and northern and north-east Lincolnshire. The whole job runs under the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015 on a JCT or NEC contract. The Health and Safety Executive's guidance on lithium battery storage informs how the cabinet is sited, ventilated and access-controlled, and that siting decision is made on survey rather than assumed. The fire and siting detail sits on our battery fire safety page.
The reason a director chooses a stack rather than a single box is what the battery is asked to do once it is live. The SolarEdge system charges from surplus solar or from cheap grid import and discharges into the expensive part of the day, which lifts the share of your own generation you actually use and trims peak-rate import. Because the 50 kW inverter is a defined power rating, it also sets how hard the battery can push against a demand peak, which is the figure that matters for peak shaving against the red-band charges and the agreed capacity on your half-hourly supply.
Beyond the meter, an AC-coupled battery of this scale can in principle be enrolled into the grid-services markets, where a third-party aggregator dispatches it into National Energy System Operator (NESO) frequency products or the Balancing Mechanism, or where it earns through the Capacity Market auctions that Ofgem oversees. We frame those markets by name and mechanism and never by a promised number: any payment from them is an auction or dispatch outcome, modelled and not promised, and it depends on your tariff, your aggregator terms and how the battery is dispatched. The economics belong in a survey-led model, so the figures route to grid services and the ROI calculator rather than appearing as a headline here.
In the configurations we supply, the 50 kW commercial battery inverter pairs with one or two battery cabinets, giving roughly 102 to 204 kWh of storage at a single inverter, and the platform scales further on larger sites. Those figures are the available range, not a quote. The actual capacity and power rating for your site come from a survey of your half-hourly load and your solar, because a battery is sized on the job it has to do.
SolarEdge is among the most established and lender-familiar makers in our line-up: a publicly listed company with a long track record in inverters and storage, and a named product warranty on its commercial battery system. We do not apply a formal tier label it does not hold. Before contract we confirm the current product, the published warranty terms and the manufacturer support for your configuration, and check that the bankability fits how your project is financed.
The storage integrates naturally where a site already runs the SolarEdge optimised-inverter platform, and that is a strong reason to choose it. But the 50 kW commercial battery inverter is AC-coupled, so it can also retrofit to an existing array on the AC side without changing the solar inverters. We make the coupling decision per site rather than defaulting either way.
Yes. A single 50 kW inverter pairs with one or two cabinets, and the platform is designed to scale beyond that on larger sites by adding capacity. We size the starting configuration to your current load and headroom, and the survey sets exactly how it scales rather than a fixed rule. Where a larger or different system fits your project better, we will say so.
No. Alectrona is brand-agnostic. SolarEdge is one option we specify where it is the right fit; the line-up also includes other established commercial makers. We specify the battery that fits the project, the scale and your risk appetite, with the current product and warranty confirmed before contract.
We will not give a fixed figure, because lead time runs on two clocks. The Commercial Storage System and 50 kW inverter are ordered to the surveyed configuration, with stock confirmed in writing before contract. In parallel, the G99 application to Northern Powergrid is often the pacing item, since its assessment timescale and any connection conditions sit outside our control. We run both clocks together and give an honest, project-specific schedule once the survey and connection position are known.
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.