Solar PV
Feasibility Study

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The first step with a solar PV feasibility study is to visit the site, meet you and undertake a detailed site survey. We need to understand the site layout and your sustainability ambitions and which parts of the site (if not all) can be utilised for solar PV power generation. It’s important for us to fully understand your principal driver because this can affect the design – do you want to maximise low-carbon energy generation, are aiming to achieve net zero, have a particular defined area you want to develop with solar PV or just want to reduce your energy bills?

We would review all of the power electrical infrastructure on site to get a better understanding of how the solar PV inverters would integrate into your existing site electrical system and the likely grid capacity for exporting surplus power. We would also consider where the inverters could be physically located.

Where possible we would look at the roof structure (for roof-mounted PV) to determine what the outer waterproofing material is (for example profiled aluminium, standing seam, asphalt, concrete etc.) so we can specify a suitable mounting system, consider the underlying structure in regard to the additional loads from the solar PV, and consider where and how the solar PV DC-cable penetrations would be made.

We would also consider access to the roof areas and for larger projects how the delivery of the hardware would be managed (bearing in mind the solar PV panels could be delivered in containers) and how they would be offloaded and stored securely on site.

Once back in the office we will process the site scan data into a full 3D model of the site and get this into PV*Sol solar PV design software. Then we can start laying out panels on the roof / ground surfaces and work out how these would be configured with the solar PV inverters. At this stage we would select a readily available and cost-effective solar PV panel from one of the ‘Silicon Module Super League (SMSL)’ manufacturers with minimum 21% efficiency, which will generally provide the highest rate of return.

Then we will carry out some baseline performance modelling to establish approximately how much energy the system will produce so this can be considered against the site’s energy consumption profile, and from this energy storage can be considered and specified.

The next step is an iteration of the above to refine the panel layout and inverter selection to optimise the solar PV energy production from the site, then the detailed performance modelling is undertaken so that the results can feed into the environmental and financial performance models.
Next follows a detailed bottom-up project costing of all the work needed to deliver a working solar PV system, followed by a financial and environmental performance analysis to demonstrate the return on investment and CO₂ savings that the system will achieve.

We will also review the consents that will be required (normally planning consent and grid connection permission), then conclude the report with an executive summary and a defined list of actions for the next steps.

Once the report is issued, we always arrange a review meeting (via video conference) to go through the report in detail and answer any questions so that all stakeholders are in a position to make decisions, and hopefully move the project forward into the design and consenting stage.