RESOLV Intelligence / Solar
18 August 2026 / 8 min read
What should an industrial solar feasibility study actually tell you?
A feasibility study is not a quotation with a chart on top. It is the document that decides whether capital should move at all, and on what terms.
Most industrial solar decisions are made on a single number: how much the array will generate. That number is the easiest to produce and the least useful on its own. A feasibility study earns its place by answering the questions a finance committee will ask after the generation figure has stopped being interesting.
The measured load, not the billed total
A facility's monthly electricity bill is an accounting summary. It hides the shape of the day. Two plants with identical monthly consumption can need completely different systems: one runs a single shift with a peak at noon, the other runs a flat twenty-four hour process with a night-heavy profile. Generation that lands outside the load window exports at little or no value, or does not get used at all.
The study should state the load in at least fifteen-minute intervals across a full operating cycle, including the season the plant is busiest. In a sugar mill that means the crushing period. In a textile unit it means the months when the full line is running and the ambient temperature is highest.
The electrical constraints that decide buildability
The operating assumptions, written down
Soiling, ambient temperature, downtime for maintenance and the degradation curve all decide what the array produces in year seven, not year one. A study that models only a clean, cool, perfectly maintained system is not a forecast, it is an advertisement. Each assumption should be listed with its source so that a reviewer can challenge it individually.
The commercial structure, stated plainly
Capital cost with its scope boundaries. Operating cost. What happens if the plant's load changes or the site is sold. Who owns the asset, who maintains it, and what the contract says when the array underperforms. A study that ends at a payback figure has stopped one step short of the decision it was written to support.
A feasibility study is finished when a sceptical engineer and a sceptical CFO can both interrogate it and reach the same conclusion.
RESOLV prepares feasibility work for facilities it subsequently builds and for clients who take the document to a competitive tender. The deliverable is the same: measurement, constraints, assumptions and commercial structure, documented so that the decision can be defended.