Alectrona
Sports venue case studyA large stadium roof, an unusual load that swings between near-silent weekdays and a packed match day, and a brief to put generation to work without disrupting the running of the ground. A representative example of how the team engineers stadium-scale solar.
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.
For transparencyThis is a representative example of the team’s work on stadium and large-venue rooftop solar, written to show the engineering method rather than to report a single completed job. The technical approach, the named standards and the survey method are exactly how the team designs and builds a system of this kind; the venue, its load and any figures are illustrative and kept qualitative. A named venue and its real project will replace it once written consent to publish is in place.
A football stadium is not an ordinary commercial building. The roof is large and spans a stand rather than a simple industrial pitch, and the electrical load behaves unlike a warehouse or a factory. For most of the week the ground draws a modest baseload from offices, hospitality kitchens, ground maintenance and the club shop. On a match day that profile changes completely, with floodlights, catering and crowd facilities all running at once, often into the evening when a rooftop array is producing little or nothing.
A venue like this wants to take control of a rising energy bill and reduce its exposure to the grid, with a clear, capex-led business case the board can sign off. The constraint is that the work cannot interfere with fixtures, safety certification or the day-to-day operation of the ground. The roof also has to be assessed honestly for whether it can carry an array at all.
The starting point is the load, not the roof. We model the stadium's consumption across a typical week using PV*SOL half-hourly modelling, so the design answers the real question for a venue like this: how much of the generation is used on site rather than exported, given that the heaviest demand falls in the evening and on match days outside peak generating hours. That self-consumption picture drives the sizing, so the array is scaled to the daytime baseload it can genuinely offset rather than to the headline area of the roof.
The roof itself is surveyed with our in-house, fully insured drone survey, flown by an A2 CofC and GVC qualified pilot, and assessed for structure, orientation and the safe routes for access and cabling. Mounting is specified to suit the roof construction, with a non-penetrative, weather-tight approach wherever the structure allows, so the existing roof covering and its warranty are respected. The grid connection is taken through the formal G99 process with the network operator, and a project of this size is engineered and certified to BS 7671, inspected to IEC 62446-1 and run under CDM 2015 as the governing standard, outside the domestic MCS scheme that does not apply to commercial arrays.
An array on a roof like this is installed and commissioned around the club's calendar, with the work staged so it does not clash with fixtures or compromise the running of the ground. On commissioning, the system begins offsetting the stadium's daytime baseload and cutting the club's draw from the grid, turning a large and otherwise unused roof into a working asset and giving the club a measure of insulation from grid price movements.
The original commissioning figures for the project behind this page are not to hand, so we describe the result qualitatively rather than quote a generation, saving or payback number we cannot stand behind. What it demonstrates is the method: survey the roof properly, model the load before sizing anything, and certify the work to named engineering standards. That method is exactly what Alectrona brings to the next venue.
Not yet. This is a representative example of how the team engineers solar for a stadium or large venue, written to show the method. The technical approach, the named standards (BS 7671, IEC 62446-1, G99, CDM 2015) and the survey process are exactly as described; the venue and any figures are illustrative and kept qualitative until a real project and written consent to publish are in place.
A stadium's load is event-driven. It runs a modest baseload most of the week and then a heavy peak on match days, often in the evening when a solar array generates little. That means the design has to be led by half-hourly load modelling, which we run in PV*SOL, so the system is sized to the demand it can genuinely offset on site rather than to the bare area of the roof.
No, and it should not be. MCS is the domestic certification scheme and does not apply to a commercial array of this scale. The trust signal here is engineering rigour and named standards: design and certification to BS 7671, inspection to IEC 62446-1, a formal G99 grid connection, and the whole job run under CDM 2015.
We model your half-hourly load against a system sized from an on-site drone survey, so the figure you get is yours, not a from-price. The same engineering discipline, on your roof.