Specialist solar panels for schools in Filton
What decides a solar scheme at a Filton school is how much of the output the site uses itself, not how much the roof makes. We arrange the roof survey, model the output against the school's own half hourly consumption, and set out the funding routes.
134,300 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 Filton- 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.
Solar for education buildings across Bristol
A one kilowatt-peak array on a shallow pitched roof in Filton models at 895 kWh a year, from modelled irradiation of 1,147 kWh per square metre in the plane of the array (EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss). That sits within a few percent of the mean across the towns we cover, so what decides the scheme is the school's own demand pattern rather than where in the country it stands.
Scaled up, a 150 kWp array, sized to what the nearest school scheme on record applied for, 8 miles away at Keynsham, models at about 134,300 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 34,100 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.
Filton ranks 5 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.
School solar on record near BS34
No school or college solar scheme appears in the BS34 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 Filton secondary could be generating today without ever reaching it.
Look 8 miles out and there is one: Wellsway School, Chandag Road in Keynsham, 150 kWp, applied for by Bath & West Community Energy, which holds consent and is awaiting construction. None of our doing. It is a public planning record, and the nearest evidence available of how an application like yours is treated around here. Source: Renewable Energy Planning Database, Q1 2026.
Term dates against the Filton generation curve
A Filton 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. July is the single strongest month here at 13.9 percent of the annual total, and it falls almost entirely inside the holiday.
Winter reverses it. December and January between them return 5.1 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 5.9 times as much in July as it does in December, and August alone outproduces December by about 4.9 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.
Summed over the year, about 49 percent of what a school roof makes arrives while the school is open. For a business trading every weekday the equivalent is roughly 71 percent. Nothing about Filton changes that ratio much, but plenty about your own site changes what to do with it.
Daily shape compounds it. A school's load climbs from breakfast club, holds through the teaching day and falls away from about three in the afternoon, while generation is still strong until six in high summer. That is why we size against half hourly meter data rather than against annual consumption: the annual figure hides both problems.
A Filton governing body should read that as a sizing constraint, not a reason to stop. The base load that runs through the holidays, servers, comms, refrigeration, ventilation and hot water, is the floor the array should be built up from, and everything above it has to be justified by storage, export or summer occupancy.
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 | 25 | 16 | 9 |
| Feb | 15 | 39 | 21 | 18 |
| Mar | 21 | 73 | 49 | 24 |
| Apr | 12 | 105 | 42 | 63 |
| May | 17 | 121 | 66 | 55 |
| Jun | 21 | 123 | 86 | 37 |
| Jul | 11 | 124 | 44 | 80 |
| Aug | 0 | 103 | 0 | 103 |
| Sep | 20 | 82 | 55 | 27 |
| Oct | 17 | 50 | 27 | 23 |
| Nov | 21 | 29 | 20 | 9 |
| Dec | 15 | 21 | 10 | 11 |
| Year | 190 | 895 | 436 | 459 |
Bristol, City of schools, phase by phase
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. Read 4.8 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 National Grid Electricity Distribution
Connections around Filton 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.
Book a roof survey at your Filton school
A survey in Filton 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 Filton 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.
Filton school solar, answered
- How much would a school roof near Filton generate?
- Modelled at 895 kWh per kWp a year, a 150 kWp array on a Filton school models at about 134,300 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 Filton?
- It goes somewhere, just not into the timetable. 25.4 percent of the Filton 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 National Grid Electricity Distribution, or a sign the array is too big. We test which before sizing anything.
- Which network operator handles the connection at a Filton school?
- Applications go to National Grid Electricity Distribution, who run the network across Bristol. 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 Bristol, City of 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 Bristol, City of on siting and design. Listed buildings and conservation areas are the usual exceptions. We put the position to Bristol, City of before a design is finalised.
- How many schools are there around Filton?
- 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.