Alectrona
Commercial guideWhere most commercial rooftop solar runs under permitted development, a ground-mount array generally needs a full planning application to the local authority, so the realistic plan is to allow for the application and its lead time. We confirm the position for your site before any design is fixed.
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.
OrientationThis is a plain-English orientation for a commercial buyer, not formal planning advice; we confirm the position for your project and its land and designations.
Rooftop and ground-mount solar are consented in two different ways, and the gap between them shapes the whole programme. Most commercial rooftop arrays fall under permitted development, which keeps the consenting route short. A ground-mounted array on spare land is assessed differently. Permitted development rights for stand-alone ground arrays are far more limited, so anything beyond a modest installation generally needs a full planning application to the local planning authority.
This guide is a plain-English orientation for a finance or facilities director weighing ground-mount against a roof. It sets out why the planning route is different, what a ground-mount application actually considers, and why the lead time is longer than a rooftop scheme. It does not state thresholds as fixed numbers, because the planning rules change and vary, and a wrong specific is worse than an honest one. We confirm the position for your land before any design is committed.
Permitted development rights are what let most rooftop solar proceed without a full planning application. For stand-alone ground-mounted arrays on commercial land, those rights are much narrower, and they are constrained by factors such as the area the array covers, its height and how close it sits to a boundary. The result is that, beyond a modest scale, a ground-mount scheme will need a full planning application rather than relying on permitted development.
The thresholds that decide where permitted development ends and a full application begins are set by the current planning legislation, and they change over time and can vary by location. For that reason we treat the route as something to confirm against your land rather than to assume from a rule of thumb. The honest headline for planning purposes is straightforward: a ground-mount array of any real size should be planned as a full application, with the lead time that comes with it, unlike most rooftop work.
A full planning application for ground-mount solar is assessed against a wider set of considerations than a rooftop array, because the development sits in the landscape rather than on an existing building. The local planning authority will typically weigh several matters together:
The exact studies a given site needs depend on its location and designations, so we scope them as part of the survey-led design rather than assuming a fixed list.
At larger scale, a ground-mount proposal can engage an additional step before the main application is determined: Environmental Impact Assessment screening. EIA is the process that decides whether a development is significant enough that its environmental effects must be formally assessed and reported. For a sizeable solar scheme, the local planning authority carries out a screening to judge whether a full Environmental Impact Assessment is required, taking the scale of the array and the sensitivity of the location into account.
Where screening concludes that an assessment is needed, the application has to be accompanied by an environmental statement, which adds both cost and time to the programme. The point at which EIA screening becomes relevant turns on the scale of the scheme and its setting, so it is confirmed for your specific proposal rather than assumed. A very large, field-scale array may also engage separate consenting regimes depending on its capacity, which we flag early if it applies to your site.
The practical difference between rooftop and ground-mount is lead time. A permitted-development rooftop array can move to design and build on a short consenting path. A ground-mount scheme runs a full planning application first, with its supporting studies, a determination period set by the local planning authority, and the possibility of conditions to discharge before work starts. That is a longer programme, and it needs to be planned in from the outset rather than discovered partway through.
Planning also rarely sits on its own. A ground-mount project runs the consenting question alongside the grid connection application to your network operator, which has its own queue and timescale, and the design and safety duties under CDM 2015. Because these systems sit above 50 kWp and outside the MCS scheme, the assurance comes from engineering rigour, named component standards and regulatory compliance rather than a domestic certificate. We carry out the planning route check as part of the same survey-led process that produces the structural and performance modelling, so the timeline you sign off reflects the real consenting path for your land. This is orientation only, and we confirm the position for your site.
For a ground-mount scheme of any scale, most local planning authorities offer a pre-application service, and using it is usually worth doing before a full application is drafted. Pre-application engagement lets the planning officer flag the issues that will dominate the assessment for your particular field, such as a landscape designation, a heritage setting, an agricultural land constraint or a drainage concern, while the layout can still be changed cheaply. The National Planning Policy Framework, published by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, encourages early engagement precisely because problems found after submission are far more expensive to fix.
The output of pre-application advice is not a decision, and it does not bind the authority, but it shapes which supporting studies the application will need and how the panel layout, fencing and screening should be arranged. It also tends to surface whether statutory consultees, such as the lead local flood authority, the highways authority or a national body for heritage or nature, are likely to be consulted. Going in with that knowledge reduces the risk of a refusal or a long round of further-information requests. We fold the pre-application step into the survey-led design so the scheme that goes forward already reflects the officer's early steer, alongside the grid connection queue position for the same site.
Two of the considerations a ground-mount application turns on deserve more detail, because they shape the layout and the land you can realistically use. The first is the agricultural land classification. The system grades farmland from the highest quality down, and national planning policy gives weight to protecting the best and most versatile land, defined in policy as Grades 1, 2 and 3a. Where a proposal sits on that better land, an authority will expect a clear justification and will look harder at whether poorer land was available instead. A site on lower-grade land, or one that keeps the land in agricultural use through sheep grazing between the rows, is generally a more straightforward planning proposition.
The second is biodiversity net gain. Under the Environment Act 2021, most new development in England is required to deliver a measurable biodiversity uplift, with the mandatory baseline set in the legislation and measured using the statutory biodiversity metric published by Natural England and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. For a field-scale array, that gain is often deliverable on the same land through wildflower margins, hedgerow planting and managed grassland beneath the panels, which can turn an obligation into a genuine ecological benefit. The exact requirement, and whether any gain can be met on site or must be secured elsewhere, depends on the baseline habitat and the current rules, so we confirm the position rather than assume it. The land area these layouts imply is the same calculation set out in our guide on how much space an array needs.
Planning and grid connection are separate consents, run in parallel, and for a ground-mount scheme the grid side is frequently the harder of the two to resolve. A field array exports differently from a rooftop system sized to a building's own load, so the connection application to the distribution network operator, Northern Powergrid across Yorkshire and northern and north-east Lincolnshire, carries more weight in the programme. The capacity available at the local network, the queue position and any reinforcement needed can all influence the viable size of the scheme, which in turn affects the layout that goes into the planning application.
The connection itself is governed by Engineering Recommendation G99, the Energy Networks Association recommendation for connecting generation to the distribution network, and the protection and control requirements scale with the size and connection voltage of the array. A large ground-mounted scheme can sit in a higher G99 type than a typical rooftop system, with additional expectations, which is set out in our guide to the G99 application. Because a planning consent for a size the grid cannot accommodate is of little use, we resolve the connection question and the planning route together, and we explain the queue dynamics that drive the timeline in the grid connection queue.
A rooftop array uses a structure that already exists. A ground-mount scheme builds its own, and the groundworks are a real part of both the planning case and the construction programme. The mounting system is typically a steel frame on piled or ground-screw foundations, set out in long rows at a fixed tilt, with cable trenches running back to an inverter and transformer compound and a point of connection to the network. Site access for delivery and for the piling rig, temporary construction compounds, and the reinstatement of any disturbed ground are all matters a planning authority will expect to see addressed, often through conditions discharged before and after the build.
Surface-water drainage is a particular focus, because panels change how rain reaches the ground and an authority will want to be satisfied the scheme does not increase flood risk downstream. Construction of this scale is a notifiable project under the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015, enforced by the Health and Safety Executive, which place duties on the client, the principal designer and the principal contractor from the design stage onward, as our guide to CDM 2015 explains. The civils, the foundations and the layout all feed the structural and performance modelling we produce from the site survey, so the programme you sign off reflects the real build sequence for your land. Where the economics of a field scheme are concerned, the modelled returns and the survey-led costs are set out through our commercial finance pages and the guide to commercial solar cost rather than quoted as a fixed figure here, and this guide remains orientation rather than formal planning advice.
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
In practice, anything beyond a modest array does. Permitted development rights for stand-alone ground-mounted solar on commercial land are far more limited than for rooftop, so a ground-mount scheme of any real size generally needs a full planning application to the local authority. The precise point at which permitted development ends is set by the current planning legislation and can vary by location, so we confirm the route against your land rather than assuming it.
A ground-mount application is assessed more broadly than a rooftop one because the array sits in the landscape. The local planning authority typically weighs the agricultural land classification, including any effect on the best and most versatile land, glint and glare from the panels, ecology and biodiversity, visual and landscape impact, and matters such as drainage, access and decommissioning. The exact studies needed depend on the site and its designations, so we scope them as part of the design.
Environmental Impact Assessment screening is the step that decides whether a development is significant enough to need a formal assessment of its environmental effects. For a larger ground-mount solar scheme, the local planning authority screens the proposal against its scale and setting to judge whether a full assessment, and an accompanying environmental statement, is required. Whether it applies to your scheme depends on its size and location, which we confirm for your specific proposal.
Meaningfully longer. A rooftop array under permitted development can move to design and build on a short consenting path, while a ground-mount scheme runs a full planning application first, with supporting studies, a determination period and the possibility of conditions to discharge before work starts. We flag this early and build it into the programme, alongside the grid connection application and the CDM 2015 duties, so the timeline reflects the real route for your land.
We carry out the planning route check as part of the survey-led design process, alongside the grid connection application and the structural work, so you know which consenting path applies before committing to a design. Where a full application or EIA screening is needed, we set that out clearly so it can be planned into the timeline. This guide is orientation only, not formal planning advice, and we confirm the specifics for your site.
We do not put a price here, because the cost of a ground-mount scheme is survey-led and driven by your specific site. A field array builds its own structure, so the steel frame, the piled or ground-screw foundations, the cable trenches and the inverter and transformer compound all add to the works that a rooftop scheme does not carry, and the planning studies and any conditions add their own. We work the figure out against your land through the survey-led design rather than quoting a fixed number, and what sits inside a commercial price is set out in our guide to commercial solar cost.
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.