Before a single panel is procured, a proper feasibility study answers the questions your board will ask: what will it generate, what will it save, and how confident are those numbers.
Commercial solar succeeds or fails before installation begins. The projects that deliver are the ones where somebody did unglamorous work up front: metering the load, reading the tariff schedule properly, checking the roof structure, and modelling conservative numbers a finance director can defend. That work is the feasibility assessment.
Stage 1: Data gathering
The study starts with at least twelve months of utility bills and, ideally, interval meter data showing consumption in half-hour blocks. Bills reveal cost structure; interval data reveals behaviour. A facility that looks like a solar candidate on annual figures can turn out to run its heaviest loads at night, and only granular data exposes that.
- Twelve months of bills across all meters and accounts
- Interval (half-hourly) consumption data where available, or temporary metering where not
- The exact tariff the site is billed on, including demand and time-of-use components
- Site drawings, roof plans and any structural documentation
Stage 2: Load profile analysis
Consumption data becomes a load profile: how many kW the site draws hour by hour, weekday versus weekend, summer versus winter. Solar generation follows the sun, so the value of a system depends on how much of that generation the site absorbs in real time. High daytime base load means high self-consumption and strong economics. Analysis at this stage often also finds efficiency opportunities that shrink the required system before it is even designed.
Stage 3: Site and structural assessment
Engineers assess usable roof area, orientation, shading, roof condition and structural capacity, plus electrical infrastructure: transformer capacity, switchgear, cable routes and metering. Structural sign-off matters more than it sounds; mounting hundreds of panels on a marginal roof is a risk no saving justifies.
Stage 4: Tariff and regulatory analysis
The same kWh saved is worth different amounts under different tariffs. Time-of-use rates, demand charges and fixed charges all shape the design, and municipal SSEG rules determine what may be exported and at what value. The study defines the registration and compliance path with your municipality or Eskom so approvals are a plan, not a surprise.
Stage 5: Energy and financial modelling
Generation is modelled from local irradiation data against the site's load profile, hour by hour, to produce expected self-consumption, export and offset. Financial modelling then layers in capital cost, maintenance, insurance, degradation and tariff escalation to produce payback, internal rate of return and a cash-flow view. Conservative assumptions are the mark of a study you can trust; if every input is best-case, the model is marketing.
Stage 6: Recommendation
The output is a recommended configuration (PV size, battery storage where it earns its place, and phasing options) with the financial case for each. Sometimes the honest recommendation is a smaller system than the roof could hold, or efficiency work first, or occasionally that solar is not yet justified. That honesty up front is what makes the eventual project bankable. If your facility is ready for that conversation, request a commercial assessment and bring your last twelve months of bills.