What would a 160 kWp array produce at a Newbury school?

Yes, and the figure matters more than the sunshine. 904 kWh per kWp a year puts a 160 kWp array at around 144,600 kWh, on roughly 475 square metres of roof. The value of that depends on your term time load. Source: EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss.

What happens to the electricity during the summer holidays in Newbury?

Less is wasted than governors expect, but the figure is worth seeing: 25.5 percent of the year is modelled to arrive in July and August here (EU PVGIS v5.2), against a site running on holiday base load. Lettings, holiday clubs and summer works take some of it, storage takes more, and the rest is an export question for Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks.

Who do we apply to for export near Newbury?

Only Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks can answer it for your connection. What we can say is that a capped export limit rarely breaks a school scheme, because the array that suits a school is sized to the term time load rather than to the roof.

Do we need planning permission in West Berkshire?

Often not, because panels on the roof of a school building usually sit within permitted development for non-domestic buildings. The exceptions are listed buildings, conservation areas and arrays that project too far above the roof plane, and larger schemes still need prior approval from West Berkshire. We confirm it either way.

Has a school near RG14 already done this?

One school scheme is on record in this postcode district, including a 160 kWp array at Mary Hare School, Wantage Road that holds consent and is awaiting construction. We were not involved in it. It is a public planning record, and it matters less as proof that solar works than as evidence of what this authority and this network operator have already accepted. Source: Renewable Energy Planning Database, Q1 2026.

How many schools are there around Newbury?

West Berkshire has 82 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register, with 24,179 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.

Specialist solar panels for schools in Newbury

A 160 kWp array at Mary Hare School, Wantage Road is the nearest school scheme on the planning record, and it holds consent and is awaiting construction. The survey records sheet type, remaining life, purlin spacing and the state of the incoming supply, and the model runs off your own meter data rather than an average.

25.5% of the modelled year lands in July and August, on a roof that returns 904 kWh per kWp a year. The worked example below runs at 160 kWp, the median size schools around Newbury have applied for. Source: EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss.

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1 teaching block
2 hall and kitchen
3 sports hall
4 1960s block, no array
first phase
later phase

Drawing Illustrative Berkshire estate

Blocks 4, 3 with array

Array about 345 kWp

Yield about 312,000 kWh/yr

Frontage about 90 m / Rev A / RG14

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.

Newbury / Berkshire

A school on the edge of a Home Counties town, solar arrays on its roofs and wooded low hills beyond — School buildings of the kind we survey across South East. Not a named school and not our work.

School solar consented near Newbury

The Renewable Energy Planning Database records 1 school and college solar scheme in the RG14 postcode district. Mary Hare School, Wantage Road is down for a 160 kWp roof mounted array and the application holds consent and is awaiting construction. The applicant on record is Mary Hare School.

Those are other organisations' planning applications, not our projects. We list them because a scheme a few miles away tells you what this local authority and this network operator have already accepted for a building very like yours. Source: Renewable Energy Planning Database, Q1 2026.

The plan above the fold is a generic four block estate, drawn to make the scale and the phasing legible. Nobody should read it as Mary Hare School, Wantage Road or as any other Newbury site. Our knowledge of these applications comes entirely from the public record.

The median array applied for here is 160 kWp. At 160 kWp you are covering roughly 475 square metres of roof once walkways, edge zones and rooflight setbacks come out, which on most sites means a sports hall plus one teaching block rather than the whole estate.

Site on record	Applicant on record	Size	Mounting	Status
Mary Hare School, Wantage Road	Mary Hare School	160 kWp	Roof	Awaiting Construction

Solar PV for academy trusts across Berkshire

A one kilowatt-peak array on a shallow pitched roof in Newbury models at 904 kWh a year, from modelled irradiation of 1,159 kWh per square metre in the plane of the array (EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss). That is roughly 2 percent above the mean across the towns we cover, so latitude is working slightly in your favour here.

Scaled up, a 160 kWp array, sized to the median array applied for at schools around Newbury itself, models at about 144,600 kWh a year before shading, and needs roughly 475 square metres of clear roof. That size is not one we chose. It is what schools in this district have actually applied for.

Spread across the year that is about 36,900 kWh landing in July and August and roughly 7,700 kWh across December and January. Scottish and Southern Electricity 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.

FIG. 1 Newbury against the rest of Berkshire

Thatcham910
Reading907
Maidenhead905
Newbury904
Slough903
Windsor901
Wokingham898
Bracknell891

Newbury ranks 4 of 8 towns we cover in Berkshire on modelled yield, against a national mean of 886 kWh per kWp. The county runs from 891 to 910, a spread of 19 kWh per kWp. Within Berkshire that difference is small enough to ignore: where the building sits is not what decides this scheme, your consumption pattern is.

Bars are zero based, so length is proportional to the figure. Where a county is flat, that is the finding: latitude is not the lever, the timetable is. Source: EU PVGIS v5.2, modelled per town

Why demand in Newbury falls as the roof peaks

The generating year and the school year are out of step in Newbury. July and August carry 25.5 percent of the modelled output (EU PVGIS v5.2), and the site is closed for most of those nine weeks. July is the single strongest month here at 13.8 percent of the annual total, and it falls almost entirely inside the holiday.

At the other end of the year the mismatch flips. Only 5.3 percent of output falls in December and January, the two months when a Newbury school is fully occupied and its heating and lighting are at their heaviest. The roof makes 5.7 times as much in July as it does in December, and August alone outproduces December by about 4.8 to one. 73 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 Newbury as anywhere else.

And the week has the same hole in it. Two days in seven the site is closed altogether, at no cost to the generation, which is part of why the session day share sits where it does. Weekend lettings are the one lever a Newbury school has over that, and they are worth counting properly.

The conclusion is not that a Newbury 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 Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks to earn its keep.

We set out the full treatment of the school year against the generation curve on the home page, and what it does to a payback figure under costs.

FIG. 2 A Newbury roof against the English school year

generated while the school is open
generated at a weekend or in the holidays

The same figures as a table

Monthly output for a 1 kWp array in Newbury, split by whether the day is a school session day. Across the year 49 percent of generation lands while the school is open.
Month	Session days	Output, kWh per kWp	School open	School closed
Jan	20	26	17	9
Feb	15	39	21	18
Mar	21	73	49	24
Apr	12	105	42	63
May	17	121	66	55
Jun	21	124	87	37
Jul	11	125	44	81
Aug	0	106	0	106
Sep	20	83	55	28
Oct	17	51	28	23
Nov	21	30	21	9
Dec	15	22	11	11
Year	190	905	441	464

Each bar is one month's output per kWp, divided at the school gate. The July bar is 5.7 times the December one and the timetable runs the other way round. We apportion a month's generation evenly over its days, having no half hourly data for your meter. Session days follow a typical English school year of 190 days. Your own trust or authority may differ by a few days either way. Source: EU PVGIS v5.2, session days from a typical school calendar

The school estate in West Berkshire

West Berkshire has 82 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register teaching 24,179 pupils between them. Source: DfE Get Information About Schools.

The split is 69 primary, 10 secondary, 2 special and 1 further education, at an average of 295 pupils a site. That is 6.9 primaries for every secondary, which is the ratio that matters for a roof: a primary of a few hundred pupils usually offers a hall roof and one teaching block, while a secondary site carries a sports hall, a dining block and several flat roofs.

If your trust holds several of them, the sequencing question comes before the sizing question. Roof age, covering type and the state of the incoming supply vary block by block across an estate, and that is normally what sets the order of works.

Aerial view of a school site with teaching blocks of several different ages, a sports hall and a playing field, solar arrays on two of the flat roofs — A school site with blocks of several ages, which is the usual starting point for a trust estate survey.

Grid connection through Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks

Scottish and Southern Electricity 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 Berkshire the planning database records 83 solar schemes totalling 317 MW, of which 8 are operational (REPD Q1 2026).

Book the survey

Send us the school postcode

Lenzie Consulting Ltd arranges roof surveys for schools across Berkshire. Send the school postcode and a rough idea of the roof area, and the last twelve months of half hourly meter data if the school holds it. We come back with what the roofs can carry, what they would generate against your own consumption, and the funding routes open to a school.

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.

What Newbury trusts ask before a survey

What would a 160 kWp array produce at a Newbury school?: Yes, and the figure matters more than the sunshine. 904 kWh per kWp a year puts a 160 kWp array at around 144,600 kWh, on roughly 475 square metres of roof. The value of that depends on your term time load. Source: EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss.
What happens to the electricity during the summer holidays in Newbury?: Less is wasted than governors expect, but the figure is worth seeing: 25.5 percent of the year is modelled to arrive in July and August here (EU PVGIS v5.2), against a site running on holiday base load. Lettings, holiday clubs and summer works take some of it, storage takes more, and the rest is an export question for Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks.
Who do we apply to for export near Newbury?: Only Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks can answer it for your connection. What we can say is that a capped export limit rarely breaks a school scheme, because the array that suits a school is sized to the term time load rather than to the roof.
Do we need planning permission in West Berkshire?: Often not, because panels on the roof of a school building usually sit within permitted development for non-domestic buildings. The exceptions are listed buildings, conservation areas and arrays that project too far above the roof plane, and larger schemes still need prior approval from West Berkshire. We confirm it either way.
Has a school near RG14 already done this?: One school scheme is on record in this postcode district, including a 160 kWp array at Mary Hare School, Wantage Road that holds consent and is awaiting construction. We were not involved in it. It is a public planning record, and it matters less as proof that solar works than as evidence of what this authority and this network operator have already accepted. Source: Renewable Energy Planning Database, Q1 2026.
How many schools are there around Newbury?: West Berkshire has 82 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register, with 24,179 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.

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