Specialist solar panels for schools in Bedminster
National Grid Electricity Distribution runs the network around Bedminster, 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.
135,900 kWh a year, modelled for a 150 kWp array on roughly 446 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 Bedminster- 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 Bristol
A one kilowatt-peak array on a shallow pitched roof in Bedminster models at 906 kWh a year, from modelled irradiation of 1,158 kWh per square metre in the plane of the array (EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss). Bedminster models 2 percent above our mean. That is a real advantage, though a smaller one than the difference between an array matched to the timetable and one matched to the roof.
Scaled up, a 150 kWp array, sized to what the nearest school scheme on record applied for, 5 miles away at Keynsham, models at about 135,900 kWh a year before shading, and needs roughly 446 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 34,500 kWh landing in July and August and roughly 6,800 kWh across December and January. National Grid Electricity Distribution 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.
Bedminster ranks 2 of 5 towns we cover in Bristol on modelled yield, against a national mean of 886 kWh per kWp. The county runs from 895 to 908, a spread of 13 kWh per kWp. Within Bristol 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 Bedminster
There is no school entry for Bedminster and the area around it in the Renewable Energy Planning Database. The register is dependable for anything from a megawatt upward and incomplete below it, and a school array is usually nearer a fifth of a megawatt, so this says more about the threshold than about Bedminster.
The nearest education scheme on the record is 5 miles from Bedminster, at Keynsham: 150 kWp at Wellsway School, Chandag Road, applicant Bath & West Community Energy, which holds consent and is awaiting construction. That is someone else's application, not ours, and it is here because it shows what Bristol planning has already accepted at an education site. Source: Renewable Energy Planning Database, Q1 2026.
The summer holiday problem for a Bedminster school
25.4 percent of the annual output modelled for Bedminster 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 6 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.
Put the two calendars together and roughly 49 percent of a school's generation nationally lands on a session day, against about 71 percent for a business open every weekday. That gap is the whole difference between appraising a school roof and appraising any other commercial one, and it barely moves from town to town.
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.
None of that makes a Bedminster scheme a bad one. It changes what the scheme should be: sized against the base load that runs whether or not the school is open, which on most sites is servers, comms, catering refrigeration, ventilation and hot water, with lettings, holiday clubs and summer works added on top. Where that base load is thin, the choices are storage, an export arrangement through National Grid Electricity Distribution, or a smaller array that consumes nearly everything it makes.
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 | 39 | 21 | 18 |
| Mar | 21 | 74 | 50 | 24 |
| Apr | 12 | 108 | 43 | 65 |
| May | 17 | 123 | 67 | 56 |
| Jun | 21 | 123 | 86 | 37 |
| Jul | 11 | 126 | 45 | 81 |
| Aug | 0 | 104 | 0 | 104 |
| Sep | 20 | 83 | 55 | 28 |
| Oct | 17 | 51 | 28 | 23 |
| Nov | 21 | 29 | 20 | 9 |
| Dec | 15 | 21 | 10 | 11 |
| Year | 190 | 905 | 440 | 465 |
Grid connection through National Grid Electricity Distribution
Connections around Bedminster are handled by National Grid Electricity Distribution, which sets the export limit for the site. Above 3.68 kW per phase the connection runs under G99, so the export limit is agreed in advance rather than assumed. Where the local network is constrained, an export-limited connection usually still makes the scheme work, because a school uses most of what the roof makes during the working day.
How many schools Bristol, City of has
Bristol, City of has 150 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register teaching 62,516 pupils between them. Source: DfE Get Information About Schools.
The split is 114 primary, 24 secondary, 9 special and 3 further education, at an average of 417 pupils a site. A ratio of 4.8 to one tells you where the roof area is. It is not with the 114 primaries, which mostly offer a hall and a teaching block each, but with the larger sites that were built with a sports hall and a dining block attached.
Where a multi-academy trust holds several of those sites, surveying the estate in one pass beats taking a roof at a time. The design work, the connection applications and the procurement paperwork are the same job repeated, and a trust that runs them together gets a better answer on all three.
Start with the Bedminster roof
Lenzie Consulting Ltd arranges roof surveys for schools across Bristol. 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.
Questions governors ask us about Bedminster schools
- What would a 150 kWp array produce at a Bedminster school?
- Yes, and the figure matters more than the sunshine. 906 kWh per kWp a year puts a 150 kWp array at around 135,900 kWh, on roughly 446 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 Bedminster?
- Less is wasted than governors expect, but the figure is worth seeing: 25.4 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 National Grid Electricity Distribution.
- Who do we apply to for export near Bedminster?
- Only National Grid Electricity Distribution 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.
- How many schools are there around Bedminster?
- Bristol, City of has 150 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register, with 62,516 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.