Is there enough sun around Thatcham for this to be worth doing?

The model gives 910 kWh a year for every kWp installed at this latitude, so a 300 kWp array comes out at roughly 273,000 kWh a year before shading. It needs about 891 square metres of clear roof once walkways and rooflight setbacks are allowed for. Source: EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss.

Does a Thatcham school waste its generation in August?

25.4 percent of the modelled annual output for Thatcham falls in July and August, when the buildings are closed for most of six weeks (EU PVGIS v5.2). It does not go to waste, but it only has three places to go: the base load that runs regardless, such as servers, catering refrigeration and ventilation; storage; or export under an agreement with Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks. We model all three against your half hourly data before an array is sized.

Will the network around Thatcham accept the export?

Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks is the distribution network operator for Berkshire. Anything above 3.68 kW per phase connects under G99, and the application fixes the export limit. On a school site the incoming supply is often the binding constraint rather than the roof, so we ask that question before anyone sizes an array.

Is planning permission needed for panels on a school in Thatcham?

Usually permitted development covers a roof array on a school, with prior approval from West Berkshire needed above a capacity threshold. A ground mounted array in the grounds is a different question and much more likely to need a full application. We check both before design sign-off.

Has a school near RG19 already done this?

One school scheme is on record in this postcode district, including a 300 kWp array at Kennet Secondary School, Stoney Lane 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 Thatcham?

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 Thatcham

A 300 kWp array at Kennet Secondary School, Stoney Lane is the nearest school scheme on the planning record, and it holds consent and is awaiting construction. We arrange the roof survey, model the output against the school's own half hourly consumption, and set out the funding routes.

273,000 kWh a year, modelled for a 300 kWp array on roughly 891 sqm of clear roof. That is the median size schools around Thatcham have applied for. Source: EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss.

Book a roof survey in Thatcham

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

Drawing Illustrative estate, not a Thatcham school

Blocks 4, 3 with array

Array about 345 kWp

Yield about 314,000 kWh/yr

Frontage about 90 m / Rev A / RG19

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.

Thatcham / 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.

Which schools around RG19 have applied

The Renewable Energy Planning Database records 1 school and college solar scheme in the RG19 postcode district. A secondary school, Kennet Secondary School, Stoney Lane, applied for 300 kWp roof mounted and the scheme holds consent and is awaiting construction. The applicant on record is EEnergy Group plc.

None of these are ours. They are entries in the public planning record, reproduced here because a consented array at a school down the road is a better guide to your own prospects than any national average. Source: Renewable Energy Planning Database, Q1 2026.

One thing to be clear about: the drawing at the head of this page is an illustrative estate, not Kennet Secondary School, Stoney Lane and not a survey of anyone's roof. What we know about the scheme above is only what the public planning record says.

The median array applied for here is 300 kWp. At 300 kWp you are covering roughly 891 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.

Every one of them is a secondary school, which is worth knowing: a secondary site normally has a sports hall, a dining block and several flat roofs, which is where the usable area comes from.

Site on record	Applicant on record	Size	Mounting	Status
Kennet Secondary School, Stoney Lane	EEnergy Group plc	300 kWp	Roof	Awaiting Construction

Solar for education buildings across Berkshire

A one kilowatt-peak array on a shallow pitched roof in Thatcham models at 910 kWh a year, from modelled irradiation of 1,168 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 3 percent above the mean across the towns we cover, so latitude is working slightly in your favour here.

Scaled up, a 300 kWp array, sized to the median array applied for at schools around Thatcham itself, models at about 273,000 kWh a year before shading, and needs roughly 891 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 69,300 kWh landing in July and August and roughly 14,200 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 Thatcham against the rest of Berkshire

Thatcham910
Reading907
Maidenhead905
Newbury904
Slough903
Windsor901
Wokingham898
Bracknell891

Thatcham ranks 1 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

Term dates against the Thatcham generation curve

A Thatcham school roof generates most in the weeks its buildings are closed. 25.4 percent of the modelled year lands in July and August alone (EU PVGIS v5.2), and the summer holiday takes roughly six of those nine weeks out of the timetable. June is the strongest single month here at 13.8 percent of the annual total, which is still term time, and that works slightly in your favour against towns whose curve peaks in July.

Winter reverses it. December and January between them return 5.2 percent of the modelled year, and that is when the heating, the lighting and a full register are all drawing at the same time. The roof makes 6 times as much in June as it does in December, and August alone outproduces December by about 5 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 Thatcham as anywhere else.

The weekly pattern repeats the annual one. Saturdays and Sundays generate as well as any other day and consume almost nothing, so before storage or export is even discussed it is worth knowing what the site does at a weekend, which only half hourly data will tell you.

The conclusion is not that a Thatcham 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 whole argument about term dates and the generation curve on the home page, and what it does to a payback figure under costs.

FIG. 2 A Thatcham 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 Thatcham, 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	74	50	24
Apr	12	106	42	64
May	17	122	67	55
Jun	21	125	88	38
Jul	11	125	44	81
Aug	0	106	0	106
Sep	20	83	55	28
Oct	17	51	28	23
Nov	21	31	22	9
Dec	15	21	10	11
Year	190	909	444	465

Per kWp installed, month by month, separating generation while the school is open from generation at a weekend or in the holidays. 73 percent of the Thatcham year sits between April and September, most of which is term time; it is the tail of that period, the last week of July and all of August, that the school is not there for. The daily split is a flat apportionment of each month, not a metered one. 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

West Berkshire schools, phase by phase

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. 6.9 primaries per secondary is a mix weighted towards small sites. The roof area, and therefore most of the generation, sits with the 10 secondaries and the 1 further education site.

Across an estate of that size the roofs will not be in the same condition, and that is the point of surveying them together: the block with the best orientation is often not the block whose covering has twenty years left in it.

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

Book a roof survey at your Thatcham school

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.

Thatcham school solar, answered

Is there enough sun around Thatcham for this to be worth doing?: The model gives 910 kWh a year for every kWp installed at this latitude, so a 300 kWp array comes out at roughly 273,000 kWh a year before shading. It needs about 891 square metres of clear roof once walkways and rooflight setbacks are allowed for. Source: EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss.
Does a Thatcham school waste its generation in August?: 25.4 percent of the modelled annual output for Thatcham falls in July and August, when the buildings are closed for most of six weeks (EU PVGIS v5.2). It does not go to waste, but it only has three places to go: the base load that runs regardless, such as servers, catering refrigeration and ventilation; storage; or export under an agreement with Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks. We model all three against your half hourly data before an array is sized.
Will the network around Thatcham accept the export?: Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks is the distribution network operator for Berkshire. Anything above 3.68 kW per phase connects under G99, and the application fixes the export limit. On a school site the incoming supply is often the binding constraint rather than the roof, so we ask that question before anyone sizes an array.
Is planning permission needed for panels on a school in Thatcham?: Usually permitted development covers a roof array on a school, with prior approval from West Berkshire needed above a capacity threshold. A ground mounted array in the grounds is a different question and much more likely to need a full application. We check both before design sign-off.
Has a school near RG19 already done this?: One school scheme is on record in this postcode district, including a 300 kWp array at Kennet Secondary School, Stoney Lane 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 Thatcham?: 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.

Nearby

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