Alectrona
Commercial solar by sectorA holiday park fills up in the summer months, exactly when the array generates most, so the busy season and the generating season are the same season. That seasonal alignment is what sets a park apart, and it is the first thing we model.
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.
This page is for the operators behind holiday parks, caravan parks, camping and touring sites, and the amenity estate that serves them: the reception and shop, the toilet and shower blocks, the laundry, the bar and restaurant, and on the larger parks a pool or leisure wing. The buildings are spread across a site rather than stacked under one roof, and the demand they draw rises and falls with the season more sharply than almost any other commercial sector.
That seasonal swing is the whole story here. A holiday park is busiest across spring and summer, and that is precisely the stretch of the year when a rooftop array produces most. Most commercial buildings have to work to line their load up with generation, while a park gets a good part of that alignment from the calendar itself. The honest counterweight is the off-season, when occupancy drops away and the site draws very little, and that dip is exactly what the sizing and the storage decision have to be built around.
An on-site drone survey and a PV*SOL model before anything is specified.
Solar earns most when the generation is used on site. A unit consumed offsets an expensive import unit, while a unit exported to the grid is paid far less, so the return tracks how well the array output lines up with demand. A holiday park gets an unusual head start on that match, because its demand peak is seasonal. Occupancy climbs through the school holidays and the summer weeks, and with it the shower blocks, the laundry, the catering, the pool plant and the reception load all run hardest, day after day, through the longest and brightest part of the year. Generation peaks in the same months. So across the season that matters most for the business, a high share of what the roof makes is consumed on site rather than spilled cheaply to export.
This is a different argument from a year-round building. A leisure centre or pool runs a heavy, continuous load every week of the year, including the dark winter months, so its case rests on steady all-year self-consumption. A hotel or conference venue rests on a base load that never really switches off. A park's case is the opposite shape: strong in season, thin out of it. That distinction drives the design. The honest caveat is the off-peak dip. When a park winds down for the winter, or runs a skeleton operation, daytime load falls and more of any generation would be exported. We do not paper over that. We model the real seasonal and half-hourly shape, size the array to the demand the park actually carries across the year, and look at whether battery storage to hold summer generation for the evening amenity peak, or a sensible export route for the quiet months, makes the better case than overbuilding a roof that would export cheaply off-season. Where a park runs a genuine year-round leisure or spa block, that part of the estate behaves more like the leisure profile, and we model it on its own terms.
A holiday park rarely presents as one large roof. The usable area is spread across the amenity estate: the reception and shop, the toilet and shower blocks, the bar and restaurant, the laundry, and any leisure or pool building, often as shallow-pitch or flat roofs with rooftop plant and ventilation to design around. Some parks also carry barn or storage roofs, and a few have land that suits a ground-mounted array. As an indicative orientation only, parks in this sector tend to fall in the region of 100 to 500 kWp once you account for amenity blocks, reception and any leisure buildings together. Treat that band as a sense of scale rather than a quote, and not a figure to plan around. The real size comes from the on-site drone survey and the PV*SOL model run against your actual half-hourly load, which for a seasonal site means designing to the demand you carry across the whole year rather than only the busy weeks. Where a park lands toward the middle of that range, the 200-300 kWp band sets out the roof area, connection and yield to expect.
We do not publish a single figure, because a park's cost turns on how much usable roof sits across the amenity estate, the grid connection your network agrees and whether storage is part of the design. As a sense of scale the system is usually in the indicative 100 to 500 kWp range, and cost per kWp falls as the system grows. The capital, allowances and payback are set out in our commercial solar cost guide. No price is quoted until your roof and load are modelled.
From a signed survey, a typical park runs a few weeks of design and a G99 connection agreement with the network before installation, then the install itself over the amenity buildings. The connection step is usually the longest lead time and is outside our control, so we start it early. Because guests are on site we phase the work building by building to keep reception, showers and catering live, and we aim the disruptive roof work at the shoulder season rather than peak occupancy. See the G99 connection guide for the network timeline.
The load shape. A leisure centre or pool runs a heavy, continuous load all year round, so its case is steady year-round self-consumption. A holiday park's demand is seasonal: it peaks in the summer months, exactly when the array generates most, then drops away out of season. That summer alignment is an unusually good match, though it comes with an off-season dip, and the two sectors are designed around those different shapes. We model your real seasonal load before sizing anything.
It is the thing we model most carefully, but it does not undermine the case. A park's busy season is the bright season, so a high share of generation is self-consumed exactly when it matters most. The honest point is that off-season load is low, so more of any winter generation would be exported and paid less. We size the array to the demand you carry across the whole year rather than the busy weeks alone, and we look at whether battery storage or a sensible export route handles the quiet months better than overbuilding the roof.
As a rough sense of scale only, parks in this sector tend to fall in an indicative band of around 100 to 500 kWp once you account for the amenity blocks, reception and any leisure buildings together. That is for orientation only rather than a quote, and it carries no price. Because the usable roof is spread across several buildings and the load is seasonal, the real figure comes from the on-site drone survey and the PV*SOL model, sized to your actual half-hourly demand across the year.
It is normal for this sector and we design for it. A park's usable area sits across reception, shower and toilet blocks, catering and any leisure building, each with its own pitch, orientation and plant. The in-house drone survey captures every roof in 3D, and the PV*SOL model sizes the array building by building against your load. Where the roofs alone fall short, some parks have barn roofs or land that suits a ground-mounted array, which the survey assesses as part of the same work.
We model your half-hourly consumption against a system sized from an on-site drone survey, so the figure you get is yours, not a from-price. No obligation, no MCS gatekeeping on systems this size.