Free remote survey

You get a branded report on your own roof, modelled by an engineer, and it costs you nothing. We need two things from you to produce it: your site address and your half-hourly electricity consumption data. There is no charge, no site visit, no contract and no obligation attached to it. You are not signing up to anything by asking, there is no term to commit to at the end of it, and if the model says the project does not stack up, that is a legitimate result and the report is still yours to keep and circulate.

Inside it are your own indicative figures: the system size your roof looks able to carry, the generation it should produce across a year, how much of that your business would use on site rather than export, and the financial picture that follows from those two. It is desktop work, modelled in PV*SOL from aerial imagery and your real load, so it is close rather than measured. That is enough to tell a finance director whether this is a project worth taking further, before anyone goes near the roof.

Most commercial enquiries land at one of two extremes. Either you get a salesperson's round number with nothing behind it, or you are asked to pay for a site visit before you have any idea whether the roof is worth the trouble. The remote survey is the step in between, and we give it away because the answer to whether solar is worth doing on your building should not sit behind a fee.

A remote survey only needs two things from you, and you almost certainly already have both. There is no site visit, no form-filling marathon and no commitment at this stage.

• Your site address, so the engineer can pull the roof from aerial imagery and read its rough size, orientation and surroundings
• Your half-hourly electricity consumption data, the standard HH data your supplier or broker can release for a metered commercial supply, so the model is run against how your business actually uses power rather than a generic assumption

If the half-hourly data is awkward to lay hands on, a year of bills or interval data from your meter operator gets us close enough to model from. The point is to start from your real consumption, because on a commercial site the return comes from the power you use on site rather than the power you export, and that is decided by your load shape.

The work is done at a desk by a real engineer, not generated by a calculator on a web page. We build a model of your roof in PV*SOL, the same modelling tool used on a full design, using Google Earth and aerial imagery to set the array out across the usable roof planes and to estimate orientation, pitch and the obvious shading. That modelled array is then run against your half-hourly load to show how much of the generation your business would use on site, how much would export, and how a battery would change the shape of both.

The method is the same one behind a quoted design, with one honest difference: at this stage every input is read from imagery and your data rather than measured on the roof, so it is an indicative model and not the final one. How that indicative model hardens into a measured design and a fixed price is the subject of how we quote; the remote report is simply the first rung.

You receive a branded report written for your site, which goes well beyond a generic brochure or a one-line estimate. Here is what is in it.

• The indicative system size the roof looks able to carry, with the array set out across the usable roof planes
• The annual generation that array should produce, modelled against its orientation, pitch and the shading that reads from the air
• How much of that generation your business would use on site and how much would spill to export, run against your own half-hourly load
• The financial picture that follows from those figures, labelled as modelled rather than promised
• An early read on whether the grid connection, rather than the roof, is the thing likely to cap the size
• What storage would do to the self-consumption figure, where a battery is worth considering at all

What it does not contain is a fixed price, a verdict on what your roof structure can carry, or a grid connection offer. None of those can honestly come off a desktop, and we would rather leave a gap than fill it with a number that moves the first time somebody stands on the roof.

The figures are yours to keep and to circulate to whoever needs to see them, including a board, an accountant or a funder, so the decision to go further is taken on real modelled numbers rather than a sales pitch. We do not publish them here, because they are specific to your roof and your load; the report is where you see them, against your own site, before a single pound has changed hands.

We are clear about what a desktop survey is and is not. Every input behind it is read from aerial imagery and your consumption data, so it is close to the truth but not measured on site. Imagery can be dated, a roof plane can be busier or smaller than it looks from above, and shading reads differently from the air than it does at deck level. The remote report is built to be honest about that rather than to flatter a number into a sale.

The step that turns indicative into measured is the on-site 3D drone survey, where our own qualified pilot flies the roof and captures it as a measured 3D model. That is the paid, higher-fidelity step, and it answers the questions a desktop cannot.

• What the roof structure will actually carry, and therefore which mounting and ballast arrangement is available to the design
• The true usable area once parapet set-backs, access zones, rooflights and plant are taken out at measured dimensions
• The condition of the roof covering and how much service life is left in it, which decides whether a re-roof should come first
• Shading as it falls at deck level, including obstructions that are invisible from directly above
• The real cable routes, the switchroom position and the practical access and safety arrangements for the install

Until those are settled the figures stay indicative, and we will keep calling them that. The remote report is what tells you whether the measured survey is worth commissioning at all.

A roof can carry far more solar than the grid will let you switch on, and for a finance director that connection limit decides whether the headline array size is real or theoretical. A commercial system above 50 kWp is connected under the G99 engineering recommendation, which means the array has to be applied for and accepted by the distribution network operator before it can run at full output. Across Yorkshire and northern Lincolnshire that operator is Northern Powergrid, and the capacity it will accept at your connection point is what caps the usable size, regardless of how much spare roof you have.

The remote report flags this early so it does not ambush the project later. From your address and the modelled array we indicate whether the size the roof wants to carry is likely to clear a G99 application or whether export may need limiting, which is far cheaper to learn at the desktop stage than after a measured survey. We do not pretend to hold a formal connection offer at this point, because only the network operator issues that. What the report does is tell you whether the grid is likely to be the binding constraint, so the figures you circulate are framed against what the connection can realistically take. How that question is then formally resolved is part of how we quote.

An indicative figure is only worth circulating if the method behind it is the same one a measured design will use, and ours is. The remote model is built in PV*SOL to the standards the final installation has to meet: the electrical design works to BS 7671, the wiring regulations, and the commissioning and inspection regime follows IEC 62446-1, the international standard for testing and documenting grid-connected PV. A commercial install is also notifiable work under CDM 2015, which places duties on the client as well as the contractor from the earliest design decisions, so modelling the roof properly at this stage is where those decisions start.

Where a figure carries financial weight we are careful how it is framed. Generation anchors such as the roughly 850 to 950 kWh per kWp a year typical of Yorkshire are indicative PV*SOL starting points read against your own orientation and shading, not a promise, and any payback or return shown is modelled rather than guaranteed, with its basis disclosed. We do not put a price on this page because the right number is site-led; the cost drivers sit in our guide to commercial solar cost and funding routes in commercial finance, and capital allowances are explained as the mechanism that applies to qualifying plant, to confirm with your accountant, never as a figure we quote. The report is written to be forwarded to a board or a funder without us in the room, and it is what tells you whether to commission the measured 3D drone survey, flown by our own in-house pilot who holds the CAA A2 Certificate of Competency and a General VLOS Certificate and is fully insured.

Two lines and an attachment start it. Send your site address and your half-hourly consumption data through the contact form, or ring the engineering team on the number at the top of this page and say you want the free remote survey. If the half-hourly data has not come back from your supplier yet, send a year of bills and we will start from those. There is no longer form to complete, no qualifying call to sit through and nobody will visit.

An engineer models it and sends the report back with your own figures in it, with no condition attached to receiving it. If it reads well, the next step is the measured 3D drone survey and then a fixed price against a designed scope, which is how we quote. If it does not read well, you have your answer at no cost, and we will tell you plainly whether it was the roof, the load or the connection that decided it.