Alectrona
Commercial guideA feasibility study is the pre-investment assessment that replaces a from-price with a real, site-specific number. It is survey, data and modelling rather than a brochure figure, and it gives the board a designed proposal with the inputs set out.
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.
Most solar quotes for a commercial roof arrive as a from-price: a rate per kWp dragged across a satellite photo. That number cannot survive the first site visit, because it knows nothing about what the roof can carry, how your business uses electricity, or what the network operator will allow you to export. A feasibility study is what replaces it.
This guide is a plain-English orientation for a finance or facilities director weighing a commercial system. It sets out what a feasibility study contains, why each part exists, and what you are handed at the end. It describes how we work; the specific numbers belong to your site and your data, and we produce them rather than guess at them here.
A commercial solar decision is a capital decision, and a capital decision needs a number you can take to the board and defend. A from-price cannot do that. It is a rate applied to a rough area, and it makes silent assumptions about the roof structure, the usable area once set-backs and plant are removed, your consumption profile and your export position. Every one of those assumptions is a place the price moves later, usually once the scaffold is up and the variation is unavoidable.
A feasibility study removes the assumptions by measuring instead. It establishes what the roof can carry, how much of the generation you would actually use on site, what the network operator will permit, and what system that points to. The output is a designed proposal with honest inputs, so the figure you take forward is for your building rather than for an average one.
A commercial feasibility study is built from a sequence of survey and analysis steps, each answering a question the from-price skipped:
On a commercial site the return does not come from how many panels fit on the roof. It comes from how much of the generation is used on site rather than exported at a lower value. That is why the half-hourly load analysis sits at the centre of the study and why the PV*SOL model is run against your real consumption rather than a generic profile.
The model knows where every obstruction sits and how the light moves, so the layout is drawn once and drawn right, and the system is sized to the load it serves. The G99 export position then sets the ceiling on what leaves the site, which is why we establish it during the study rather than after design. A system that ignores any of these can look attractive on a spreadsheet and disappoint on the meter; a feasibility study is what stops that happening.
The deliverable is a designed proposal you can act on: an indicative system size, a layout against your surveyed roof, the modelled generation and self-consumption, the connection and export position, and the business-case inputs set out honestly so your finance team can test them. It is the difference between a number that survives board scrutiny and one that does not.
From there the economics are yours to interrogate. We route the cost and return questions to where they belong rather than stating a figure here: the cost picture sits under our finance guidance, and the payback and ROI method has its own guide so you can see exactly how the numbers are built. The point of the study is to give you defensible inputs rather than a headline you have to take on trust.
The roof survey is flown rather than walked. An in-house pilot captures the roof with a drone, building a measured photogrammetric model from overlapping imagery, so the survey records the usable plane area once set-backs, plant, rooflights and walkways are removed, the pitch and azimuth of each roof slope, and the way shading from parapets, flues and adjacent structures tracks across the day and the seasons. That is survey data accurate enough to draw a string layout against, which a satellite image cannot give. Drone capture under UK rules is governed by the Civil Aviation Authority's CAP 722 and the UK Air Navigation Order, and a commercial flight over an occupied site is planned for those rules rather than improvised on the day.
The survey also feeds the structural question, because the mounting and module loads have to be carried by the roof you have rather than an assumed one. The captured geometry and a roof build-up assessment inform the loading check, which a competent person verifies against the Eurocodes: BS EN 1991-1-4 for wind actions and BS EN 1991-1-3 for snow, with edge and corner zones seeing higher wind uplift than the field of the array. Where the roof is older or lightweight, that check is what points to a non-penetrating ballasted system or strengthening rather than a fixed assumption. Because a commercial install above 50 kWp is construction work, the survey and the build that follows sit under the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015; the feasibility stage is where those duties are first scoped. The roof-area arithmetic behind the indicative size is set out in our how much roof space guide, and the height-access duties in working at height safety.
Two inputs drive the study: roof access for the drone survey, and your electricity consumption at half-hourly granularity. Half-hourly data is the record of how much your site draws in each 30-minute settlement period, and it is what reveals the share of generation you would use on site against the share that would export at a lower value. A site on a half-hourly meter, which most larger commercial supplies are, already has this data; your supplier or data collector can release it, typically as a year of readings so the model sees both the long summer days and the short winter ones.
If a site sits on a non-half-hourly meter, the picture is coarser, and we are honest about the gap rather than inventing a profile. In that case the model is built from the best available evidence: monthly or annual kWh from bills, the site's operating pattern and shift hours, and the known loads such as refrigeration, compressed air or process plant that set the daytime base. Where it materially affects the case, the cleaner route is to fit a half-hourly or smart meter and gather a few representative weeks before committing capital, because the self-consumption estimate is the single largest swing in a commercial business case. The reason this input carries so much weight is set out further in our payback and ROI guide, and where a battery changes the day-to-night shape of self-consumption is covered under design and engineering.
The study models the whole system the site can actually run rather than the array in isolation. In PV*SOL the surveyed roof and your real load are run together to show expected annual generation, the self-consumed and exported shares, and how those shares move if a battery is added to shift midday surplus into evening or early-morning demand. A battery is modelled as a scenario rather than assumed, because its value depends entirely on the shape of your load and your export position, and on some sites it earns its place while on others it does not. The yield model uses standard engineering anchors, a specific yield in kWh per kWp for the region and a performance ratio in the order of 0.80 to 0.85, as starting points that are then reconciled to the surveyed roof rather than presented as a promise.
The grid connection is established during the study because it sets the ceiling on what the system can do rather than after the design is drawn. A commercial system connects under the Energy Networks Association's Engineering Recommendation G99 to the local Distribution Network Operator, which for sites across Yorkshire and northern and north-east Lincolnshire is Northern Powergrid. Where the network would otherwise constrain export, the system can be held within an agreed limit using export limitation under ENA G100, which keeps the design viable rather than stalled in a queue. Both shape what is worth installing, so the feasibility read takes a view on them up front. The connection route is covered in our G99 application guide, the waiting position in grid connection queue, and the export-limit mechanism in export limitation under G100.
A feasibility study is the pre-investment read rather than the construction issue. Its job is to give the board a defensible decision: a measured roof, a modelled yield and self-consumption, an established grid position, an indicative system size and a layout drawn against the real roof, with the business-case inputs stated openly so finance can test them. It is detailed enough to commit capital against and to compare bidders on a like-for-like basis, but it is deliberately a feasibility-grade document rather than the full set of construction drawings, protection settings and method statements that follow once a project is sanctioned.
After a positive decision the work moves into detailed design and engineering, where the indicative layout becomes a stamped string design, the structural check becomes a signed report, the G99 application is submitted to Northern Powergrid and carried through to a connection offer, and the CDM 2015 roles, the Principal Designer and Principal Contractor, are appointed in writing with a Construction Phase Plan in place before any work starts. The feasibility study is what makes that next stage efficient, because the survey and the load analysis are already done and verified. How that designed scope becomes a real, survey-led number is set out in our how we quote page, the construction duties in our CDM 2015 guide, and the cost picture, deliberately survey-led rather than a headline rate, in our commercial solar cost guide.
Our own insured pilot flies your roof and captures the real geometry and shading, so the design starts from your building instead of a satellite guess.
Booked to suit your operating hours
We model the array in bankable-grade software, size it around your daytime load, and set out generation, savings and payback across three funding routes.
Modelled, not promised
Designed and installed to BS 7671, commissioned to IEC 62446-1, connected under G99 and run under CDM 2015. Alectrona is typically the Principal Contractor.
Outside MCS, assured by the non-MCS stack
A 12-month defects period backed by an Insurance-Backed Guarantee, then ongoing operations and maintenance so the asset keeps earning for its full working life.
Kept performing, year on year
Last updated June 2026
It is the pre-investment assessment that turns a generic from-price into a real, site-specific proposal. It combines a roof and structural survey captured by a 3D drone survey, a half-hourly consumption analysis, a PV*SOL yield and self-consumption model, the DNO and G99 export position, an indicative system size and a designed layout. The output is a proposal your finance team can test, with the business-case inputs set out openly.
Because a price per kWp is a guess that gets corrected later at your cost. It assumes a usable area, a structure, a consumption profile and an export position it has never measured. A feasibility study measures each of those instead, so the figure you take to the board is for your building rather than an average one and is far less likely to move once work starts.
Mainly two things: access to carry out the drone survey of your roof, and your half-hourly electricity consumption data so we can model how much of the generation you would use on site. With those we can survey the roof, analyse the load in PV*SOL, establish the G99 connection and export position, and return a designed system sized to your site.
On a commercial site the return comes from self-consumption, the share of generation used on site rather than exported at a lower value. Your half-hourly load is what reveals that share. Running it against the surveyed roof in PV*SOL is what separates a system sized to your real demand from one sized to a rule of thumb, and it is the single biggest driver of how the system performs in practice.
The study produces the designed system and the honest inputs behind it, then the economics follow from those. We do not state a headline cost or payback in this guide because they belong to your site and your data. The cost picture sits under our finance guidance, and the payback and ROI method has its own guide so you can see exactly how the figures are built rather than take them on trust.
Most feasibility studies are turned around in a small number of weeks rather than days, with the timing set mainly by two things: arranging roof access for the drone survey, and the release of your half-hourly consumption data from your supplier or data collector. The survey flight itself is a single visit, and the PV*SOL modelling and the indicative design follow once the load data is in hand. The longest lead item on the wider project is almost always the G99 grid connection, which is applied for after the study and can run to months, so establishing the connection position early is part of why the study front-loads it. We confirm a realistic timeline for your site once access and data are scoped.
A guide can only take you so far. The figure you get is modelled from your own half-hourly load and a system sized from the on-site drone survey. No obligation, and systems this size sit outside the domestic MCS scheme, so the assurance is the engineering stack.