Specialist solar panels for schools in Dunstable
A school roof in Dunstable makes 5.9 times as much in July as it does in December, and the school year runs against that curve rather than with it. What we come back with is the usable roof area, the modelled output against your meter data, and the routes schools use to pay for it.
151,800 kWh a year, modelled for a 170 kWp array on roughly 505 sqm of clear roof. That is the size applied for at the nearest school scheme on record. Source: EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss.
Book a roof survey in Dunstable- 1 teaching block
- 2 hall and kitchen
- 3 sports hall
- 4 1960s block, no array
- first phase
- later phase
Illustrative layout for an estate of this size. The array is drawn at about 345 kWp, roughly 53 percent of the 650 kWp these three roofs would hold, because a school sizes to the load it can use in term time rather than to the roof it has: generation it cannot use is exported at a much lower rate than it pays to import. The hatched block carries no array because its structure has not been assessed, which on a school of that era is the usual starting point rather than an exception. Your own figures, and which of your blocks can take an array, come from the roof survey.
School rooftop solar across Bedfordshire
A one kilowatt-peak array on a shallow pitched roof in Dunstable models at 893 kWh a year, from modelled irradiation of 1,143 kWh per square metre in the plane of the array (EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss). Against a mean of 886 kWh per kWp across the towns we cover, Dunstable is unremarkable, which is the useful finding: the scheme will be decided by the load curve, not the map.
Scaled up, a 170 kWp array, sized to what the nearest school scheme on record applied for, 13 miles away at St Albans, models at about 151,800 kWh a year before shading, and needs roughly 505 square metres of clear roof. We take the size from the nearest real application rather than a round number, so the example is anchored to something a planning officer has already seen.
Spread across the year that is about 38,900 kWh landing in July and August and roughly 7,600 kWh across December and January. UK Power Networks sets what may go back onto the network here, so the July figure is the one worth putting in front of a governing body first.
Dunstable ranks 6 of 7 towns we cover in Bedfordshire on modelled yield, against a national mean of 886 kWh per kWp. The county runs from 892 to 902, a spread of 10 kWh per kWp. Within Bedfordshire that difference is small enough to ignore: where the building sits is not what decides this scheme, your consumption pattern is.
What the planning record shows around Dunstable
No school or college solar scheme appears in the LU6 postcode district in the Renewable Energy Planning Database. That is a reporting threshold rather than a verdict. The database records generating stations from one megawatt upward reliably and smaller ones patchily, and almost every school array is a fraction of that, so a roof full of panels on a Dunstable secondary could be generating today without ever reaching it.
The nearest education scheme on the record is 13 miles from Dunstable, at St Albans: 200 kWp at Samuel Ryder Academy, applicant Scholars Education Trust, which was withdrawn before determination. That is someone else's application, not ours, and it is here because it shows what Hertfordshire planning has already accepted at an education site. Source: Renewable Energy Planning Database, Q1 2026.
The summer holiday problem for a Dunstable school
25.6 percent of the annual output modelled for Dunstable arrives in the two months a school uses least (EU PVGIS v5.2). Term ends in the third week of July and the buildings stay largely empty until September. July is the single strongest month here at 13.9 percent of the annual total, and it falls almost entirely inside the holiday.
The inverse holds at the other end. December and January together return only 5 percent of the year, and those are the months with the heating, the lighting and the full timetable all running at once. The roof makes 5.9 times as much in July as it does in December, and August alone outproduces December by about 5 to one. 74 percent of the year arrives between April and September, and the point of that figure is not that the summer half goes unused, because April, May and June are full teaching months that draw hard. It is that the concentration peaks in the few weeks at the end of it when the building is shut.
Nationally this comes out at about 49 percent of annual generation falling on a session day. A business open every weekday sees roughly 71 percent. The 22 point gap is what a school appraisal has to absorb, and it is much the same in Dunstable as anywhere else.
Inside the day it happens again. The roof is still at three quarters of its peak at four in the afternoon, by which time a Dunstable school is largely empty, so the hours that look best on a generation chart are the worst on a consumption one.
The conclusion is not that a Dunstable school should do nothing. It is that the array should be sized to the load that survives the holidays, which is usually the server room, the catering refrigeration, the ventilation and the hot water, plus whatever the site lets out over the summer. Anything above that line needs storage or an export agreement with UK Power Networks to earn its keep.
We set out the whole argument about term dates and the generation curve on the home page, and what it does to a payback figure under costs.
- generated while the school is open
- generated at a weekend or in the holidays
The same figures as a table
| Month | Session days | Output, kWh per kWp | School open | School closed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jan | 20 | 24 | 15 | 9 |
| Feb | 15 | 38 | 20 | 18 |
| Mar | 21 | 73 | 49 | 24 |
| Apr | 12 | 104 | 42 | 62 |
| May | 17 | 119 | 65 | 54 |
| Jun | 21 | 123 | 86 | 37 |
| Jul | 11 | 124 | 44 | 80 |
| Aug | 0 | 105 | 0 | 105 |
| Sep | 20 | 83 | 55 | 28 |
| Oct | 17 | 50 | 27 | 23 |
| Nov | 21 | 29 | 20 | 9 |
| Dec | 15 | 21 | 10 | 11 |
| Year | 190 | 893 | 433 | 460 |
How many schools Central Bedfordshire has
Central Bedfordshire has 128 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register teaching 48,810 pupils between them. Source: DfE Get Information About Schools.
The split is 97 primary, 27 secondary and 4 special, at an average of 381 pupils a site. Read 3.6 primaries per secondary as a sequencing hint rather than a statistic. A primary is a single survey visit and a modest array; a secondary is several roofs of different ages on one site, and that is where both the area and the complications are.
A trust holding more than one of these sites should look at them together. Grouping the surveys turns the grid question, the funding question and the procurement route into one exercise rather than four, and it usually changes which roof goes first.
Grid connection through UK Power Networks
UK Power Networks is the network operator here, and their answer on export capacity shapes the design. Any commercial array above 3.68 kW per phase connects under G99 rather than G98, and the application fixes what you are allowed to push back onto the network. If the local network is tight, limiting export rarely breaks the case here: most of the generation is consumed on site while the building is working.
Across Bedfordshire the planning database records 89 solar schemes totalling 837 MW, of which 16 are operational (REPD Q1 2026).
Start with the Dunstable roof
Roof condition decides the order of works on most school estates, so that is where we start. Send us the postcode and a rough roof area, with twelve months of half hourly readings if you have them, and we come back with usable area, modelled output against your own load, and the funding routes.
Lenzie Consulting Ltd arranges the survey and passes your details to an MCS-certified installation partner so they can quote. We do not carry out the installation ourselves.
Questions governors ask us about Dunstable schools
- How much would a school roof near Dunstable generate?
- Modelled at 893 kWh per kWp a year, a 170 kWp array on a Dunstable school models at about 151,800 kWh. What decides whether that is worth doing is how much of it the school uses itself, not the total. Source: EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss.
- How does the school year affect a solar scheme in Dunstable?
- It goes somewhere, just not into the timetable. 25.6 percent of the Dunstable generating year lands in July and August (EU PVGIS v5.2), and a closed school still runs servers, comms, refrigeration and ventilation. What that base load does not absorb is either stored, exported under an agreement with UK Power Networks, or a sign the array is too big. We test which before sizing anything.
- Which network operator handles the connection at a Dunstable school?
- Applications go to UK Power Networks, who run the network across Bedfordshire. An export-limited offer usually still works for a school, because the summer surplus is the part you were least likely to be paid much for anyway.
- What does Central Bedfordshire require for solar on a school building?
- Roof-mounted solar on a non-domestic building often falls within permitted development under Part 14 of the General Permitted Development Order, subject to limits on how far the panels stand proud of the roof plane and, above a threshold, to prior approval from Central Bedfordshire on siting and design. Listed buildings and conservation areas are the usual exceptions. We put the position to Central Bedfordshire before a design is finalised.
- How many schools are there around Dunstable?
- Central Bedfordshire has 128 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register, with 48,810 pupils on roll. Source: DfE Get Information About Schools. We survey across the whole of that area, and where a trust holds several sites we look at them in one pass.