Specialist solar panels for schools in Wokingham
Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks runs the network around Wokingham, and on a school site their answer on export shapes the design as much as the roof pitch does. We look at the roof, the switchboard and the timetable in that order, then set the array size against what the site draws in term time.
25.5% of the modelled year lands in July and August, on a roof that returns 898 kWh per kWp a year. The worked example below runs at 250 kWp, 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 Wokingham- 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 Berkshire
A one kilowatt-peak array on a shallow pitched roof in Wokingham models at 898 kWh a year, from modelled irradiation of 1,153 kWh per square metre in the plane of the array (EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss). That puts Wokingham in the middle of the national range, close enough to our mean of 886 kWh per kWp that the interesting question moves straight to consumption.
Scaled up, a 250 kWp array, sized to what the nearest school scheme on record applied for, 10 miles away at Maidenhead, models at about 224,500 kWh a year before shading, and needs roughly 743 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 57,200 kWh landing in July and August and roughly 11,700 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.
Wokingham ranks 7 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.
What the planning record shows around Wokingham
Search the Renewable Energy Planning Database for the RG40 postcode district and nothing comes back under education. That is worth stating plainly and then setting aside: the register is built around generating stations, a school array is a fraction of the size it captures reliably, and plenty of school roofs never appear in any national record at all.
The nearest education scheme on the record is 10 miles from Wokingham, at Maidenhead: 250 kWp at Furze Platt Senior School, Furze Platt Road, applicant Furze Platt Senior School, which holds consent and is awaiting construction. That is someone else's application, not ours, and it is here because it shows what Berkshire planning has already accepted at an education site. Source: Renewable Energy Planning Database, Q1 2026.
The summer holiday problem for a Wokingham school
25.5 percent of the annual output modelled for Wokingham 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. June is the strongest single month here at 13.9 percent of the annual total, which is still term time, and that works slightly in your favour against towns whose curve peaks in July.
The inverse holds at the other end. December and January together return only 5.2 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 5.7 times as much in June 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.
Across the country the arithmetic settles at roughly 49 percent of output on a session day, against about 71 percent for a weekday business. That figure hardly varies by location, which is why the local numbers that matter here are the yield, the roofs and what has already cleared planning nearby.
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 Wokingham school is largely empty, so the hours that look best on a generation chart are the worst on a consumption one.
That argues for a particular shape of scheme rather than against one. Size to the load that does not stop at the end of term, count in lettings, holiday clubs and summer works honestly rather than optimistically, and then decide whether storage or an export arrangement with Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks pays for the surplus that is left.
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.
- 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 | 25 | 16 | 9 |
| Feb | 15 | 38 | 20 | 18 |
| Mar | 21 | 72 | 49 | 23 |
| Apr | 12 | 104 | 42 | 62 |
| May | 17 | 120 | 66 | 54 |
| Jun | 21 | 125 | 88 | 38 |
| Jul | 11 | 124 | 44 | 80 |
| Aug | 0 | 105 | 0 | 105 |
| Sep | 20 | 82 | 55 | 27 |
| Oct | 17 | 51 | 28 | 23 |
| Nov | 21 | 30 | 21 | 9 |
| Dec | 15 | 22 | 11 | 11 |
| Year | 190 | 898 | 440 | 458 |
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).
How many schools Wokingham has
Wokingham has 68 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register teaching 28,772 pupils between them. Source: DfE Get Information About Schools.
The split is 55 primary, 10 secondary and 3 special, at an average of 423 pupils a site. 5.5 primaries per secondary is a mix weighted towards small sites. The roof area, and therefore most of the generation, sits with the 10 secondaries.
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.
Start with the Wokingham roof
A survey in Wokingham starts with three things from you. Give us the postcode, the approximate roof area and, if you can get it from your supplier, twelve months of half hourly readings. What comes back is a usable area figure per block, output modelled against your own load rather than an average, and the ways a Wokingham school can pay for it.
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 Wokingham schools
- What would a 250 kWp array produce at a Wokingham school?
- Yes, and the figure matters more than the sunshine. 898 kWh per kWp a year puts a 250 kWp array at around 224,500 kWh, on roughly 743 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 Wokingham?
- 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 Wokingham?
- 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 Wokingham?
- 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 Wokingham. We confirm it either way.
- How many schools are there around Wokingham?
- Wokingham has 68 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register, with 28,772 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.