Alectrona
Commercial solar by sectorA forecourt shop draws power around the clock through its refrigeration and lighting, the canopy offers a second surface to array, and as the site adds rapid EV charging a large new daytime load arrives that on-site solar and storage can help feed.
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 petrol stations, motorway and trunk-road service areas, and the convenience forecourts attached to them. A forecourt is two buildings in one electrical sense: a modest shop that never really closes, and a fuelling area whose canopy and hardstanding offer area that an ordinary retail unit does not have. What is changing fastest here is the move to electric, because as forecourts add rapid charging they take on a large new on-site load that solar and storage can help feed and connect.
That makes a forecourt a different proposition from a retail park or superstore, where the story is a wide existing roof already self-consuming a heavy trading load. Here the shop roof is smaller, the canopy adds usable area, and the load is on a trajectory rather than a steady state. The only honest way to size it is to model where that load is heading as well as where it sits today.
Engineer-led commercial solar, over 50 kWp and outside MCS.
Solar earns most when the generation is used on site. A unit you consume offsets an expensive import unit, while a unit exported to the grid is paid far less, so the return tracks how well array output lines up with the building's demand. A forecourt has a useful base for that already. The shop runs chilled and frozen cabinets, food-to-go equipment and long-hours lighting, a continuous draw that holds through the day and peaks in the summer cooling season when generation is also at its highest. That baseload self-consumes a steady share before charging is even considered.
The shift that changes the case is electrification, and it is a different kind of charging from the trading load self-consumed under a retail park roof. Forecourt charging is public rapid DC charging: high power, customer-facing, and concentrated in daytime hours when drivers stop. That demand lands squarely in the window the array generates, so it lifts self-consumption rather than spilling to export. Where the charging pattern runs into evenings or peaks beyond what daytime generation covers, battery storage shifts midday output into those windows and softens the grid-supply peak. Rapid charging also raises a connection question that is specific to this sector, because high-power DC charging and an export-capable array both load the network, so a connection over the relevant threshold needs a G99 application and may sit in the grid connection queue. We look at that alongside the array. See our EV-charging service for how the two are planned together.
A forecourt array usually combines two surfaces rather than one. The shop and ancillary roofs take a roof-mounted system, and the fuelling canopy can carry panels across an area that is otherwise unused, sheltering the pumps and any chargers beneath it. Because the shop roof on its own is modest, the canopy does a lot of the work, and forecourt sites in this sector tend to fall in the region of 50 to 250 kWp once you count the canopy alongside the shop roof. Treat that purely as a sense of scale. It carries no price and is indicative only. The real figure comes from the on-site survey and the PV*SOL model, which size the combined system to your actual roof, canopy and load rather than to a category average.
A live fuelling site carries duties no ordinary roof does. The forecourt sits inside a regulated hazardous area, and that governs where solar plant, cabling and chargers can go. Petrol vapour creates zoned spaces around the pumps, vent stacks and fill points under DSEAR and the dangerous-substances rules, and any electrical work inside or near those zones has to respect the zoning rather than design over it. In practice that means inverters, isolators, battery enclosures and the DC runs from a canopy array are kept clear of the classified areas, cable routes are planned around the tank farm and interceptor, and hot works on a trading forecourt are tightly controlled. None of this stops a forecourt going solar. It does mean the layout is set by the site survey and the operator's hazardous-area drawings together, not by the roof geometry alone, which is one more reason the design here cannot be done from a desktop image.
The work also has to keep the site trading. A forecourt rarely closes, so the install is sequenced so fuelling, the shop and any existing chargers stay live, with the canopy work and the grid tie-in staged around delivery tankers and peak custom rather than against them. Because the system is over 50 kWp it sits outside MCS by design, so the assurance is the commercial engineering stack: design to BS 7671, a G99 connection agreed with Northern Powergrid, CDM 2015 with a Principal Designer and Principal Contractor appointed for a hazardous live environment, and IEC 62446-1 commissioning before energisation. The AM2-trained Qualifying Supervisor who signs off the install is working on an operational fuel site, which is precisely why the duty-holder roles and the method statement matter more here than on an empty warehouse roof.
The financial fit follows the load shape rather than a headline figure. What makes a forecourt's case is the overlap between what the array makes and what the site uses in the same half-hour, and that overlap is unusually strong here for two reasons. The shop's refrigeration and food-to-go load is a daytime, summer-weighted base that self-consumes a steady share before charging is counted, and rapid charging adds demand squarely in the daylight hours drivers stop. As a PV*SOL modelling starting point we confirm against your own metering rather than a promise, a well-orientated forecourt array can self-consume a high proportion of its output once daytime charging is in the profile, which is the opposite of an export-heavy site that spills its midday peak cheaply. Where charging runs into the evening, or the chargers pull more than daytime generation covers, battery storage holds midday output for those windows and trims the half-hourly grid peak the chargers create, which can matter for the capacity charges on the connection.
Capital, tax and connection are read together before any number is given. A forecourt array is a qualifying plant-and-machinery investment, so the capital-allowance position is part of the picture rather than an afterthought, and the canopy-versus-roof split changes the cost per kWp because canopy mounting carries more structure than a shop roof. We do not put a payback or a price on this page. The economics are modelled on your real figures and set out in our commercial solar cost guide and weighed honestly in is commercial solar worth it, and the first feasibility read is free. The point of the survey is to replace a category average with a fixed figure for your shop roof, your canopy and your planned charging, including whether storage earns its place against that charging trajectory.
Grid capacity is the constraint that shapes a charging forecourt, and it is worth understanding early. Most existing forecourts were connected for a shop and a fuel pump motor load, not for several rapid chargers and an export-capable array on top. Adding both can take the site past the headroom the original connection allows, and that is a question for Northern Powergrid as the network operator across Yorkshire and north and north-east Lincolnshire, not something the roof design can settle on its own. An export-capable array over the relevant threshold needs a G99 application, and where the local network is constrained the connection offer may come with an export limit, a curtailment condition, or a reinforcement cost and timescale. We treat that as part of the design rather than a surprise at the end. By modelling the array, the storage and the planned charging against the connection capacity together, the system can often be shaped to stay within a sensible export limit, with storage absorbing the midday peak instead of pushing it onto a constrained network. Where reinforcement is genuinely needed, knowing it at the survey stage lets it run in parallel with the rest of the programme rather than holding everything up, and the grid connection queue sets out how those timescales behave. Planning the charging and the array as one connection is what keeps a forecourt from solving its energy bill and creating a grid bottleneck in the same move.
Because the load shape and the roof are both different. A retail park self-consumes a heavy trading load under a wide existing roof, so the case rests largely on what is already there. A forecourt has a smaller shop roof but adds the fuelling canopy as a second array surface, and its load is on a trajectory: the shop refrigeration and lighting run long hours today, while rapid EV charging adds a large new daytime draw as the site electrifies. We size to where that load is heading as well as where it sits now, which is why the modelling matters more here than a roof estimate.
It strengthens it where the charging is daytime, which most forecourt charging is, because drivers stop and charge through the day. That demand lands in the hours the array generates, so a higher share of the generation is used on site rather than exported. Public rapid charging is high power, so it also raises a grid-connection question we look at alongside the array, and battery storage can shift midday output into evening peaks or cover draw beyond what daytime generation supplies. We plan the array and the charging together rather than in isolation; see our EV-charging service for how that works.
Often, yes, and on a forecourt the canopy matters more than usual because the shop roof on its own is modest. Panels across the fuelling canopy add capacity over an area that is otherwise unused, and they shelter the pumps and any chargers beneath. The drone survey records both the shop roof and the canopy structure, and the PV*SOL model sizes the combined system to your actual load. Whether the canopy can carry an array, and at what loading, is something the structural side of the survey confirms.
That depends on your shop roof, your canopy area and where your load is heading as charging is added, so the survey decides it. As a rough sense of scale only, forecourt sites tend to fall in the region of 50 to 250 kWp once the canopy is counted alongside the shop roof. That is indicative only, carries no price, and is not a quote. The real figure comes from the on-site drone survey and the PV*SOL model for your specific site and your planned charging.
We do not quote a price on this page, because cost on a forecourt depends on how the array splits between the canopy and the shop roof, the structural work the canopy needs, and whether storage is added to support charging. Canopy mounting carries more structure than a shop roof, so it sits at a higher cost per kWp, which means the surface mix moves the figure. We model the site before we quote, and the first feasibility read is free. The drone survey and the PV*SOL model give you a fixed figure for your site rather than a sector average, and a forecourt array is qualifying plant for capital-allowance purposes. For the cost drivers and how the numbers are weighed, see our commercial solar cost guide and is commercial solar worth it.
The survey and design stage runs first, then the install on a live forecourt is usually a small number of weeks, sequenced so fuelling and the shop keep trading and the canopy work is staged around tankers and peak custom. The longer lead time is often the grid connection rather than the roof, because rapid DC charging and an export-capable array both raise a network question. A connection over the relevant threshold needs a G99 application to Northern Powergrid, which runs on the network's own timescale, so we start it early and run it in parallel with design. See the grid connection queue for how that timing works.
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.