Specialist solar panels for schools in St Neots
25.5 percent of what a St Neots school roof makes arrives in July and August, which is when the buildings are shut. A survey here starts with the covering and the structure, then the incoming supply, then what the timetable actually draws.
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 210 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 St Neots- 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 PV for academy trusts across Cambridgeshire
A one kilowatt-peak array on a shallow pitched roof in St Neots models at 898 kWh a year, from modelled irradiation of 1,150 kWh per square metre in the plane of the array (EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss). That is within a few percent of our mean. Latitude is not the variable here. When the building is occupied is.
Scaled up, a 210 kWp array, sized to what the nearest school scheme on record applied for, 10 miles away at Bedford, models at about 188,600 kWh a year before shading, and needs roughly 624 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 48,100 kWh landing in July and August and roughly 9,400 kWh across December and January. UK Power 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.
St Neots ranks 8 of 8 towns we cover in Cambridgeshire on modelled yield, against a national mean of 886 kWh per kWp. The county runs from 898 to 908, a spread of 10 kWh per kWp. Within Cambridgeshire that difference is small enough to ignore: where the building sits is not what decides this scheme, your consumption pattern is.
The planning position for St Neots schools
Search the Renewable Energy Planning Database for the PE19 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 closest recorded one is about 10 miles away at Bedford: Bedford School, De Parys Avenue, a 210 kWp roof mounted array applied for by Bedford School, which is with the planning authority. We were not involved in it. We cite it because it is a public record of what has cleared planning in this part of Bedfordshire. Source: Renewable Energy Planning Database, Q1 2026.
Why demand in St Neots falls as the roof peaks
The generating year and the school year are out of step in St Neots. 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. 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.
At the other end of the year the mismatch flips. Only 5 percent of output falls in December and January, the two months when a St Neots school is fully occupied and its heating and lighting are at their heaviest. The roof makes 5.9 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.
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.
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 St Neots school has over that, and they are worth counting properly.
None of that makes a St Neots 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 UK Power Networks, or a smaller array that consumes nearly everything it makes.
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 | 24 | 15 | 9 |
| Feb | 15 | 39 | 21 | 18 |
| Mar | 21 | 73 | 49 | 24 |
| Apr | 12 | 103 | 41 | 62 |
| May | 17 | 121 | 66 | 55 |
| Jun | 21 | 124 | 87 | 37 |
| Jul | 11 | 124 | 44 | 80 |
| Aug | 0 | 105 | 0 | 105 |
| Sep | 20 | 82 | 55 | 27 |
| Oct | 17 | 51 | 28 | 23 |
| Nov | 21 | 31 | 22 | 9 |
| Dec | 15 | 21 | 10 | 11 |
| Year | 190 | 898 | 438 | 460 |
Grid connection through UK Power Networks
Connections around St Neots are handled by UK Power Networks, 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.
Across Cambridgeshire the planning database records 172 solar schemes totalling 2422 MW, of which 46 are operational (REPD Q1 2026).
The school estate in Huntingdonshire
Huntingdonshire has 74 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register teaching 24,299 pupils between them. Source: DfE Get Information About Schools.
The split is 63 primary, 7 secondary and 4 special, at an average of 328 pupils a site. 9 primaries per secondary is a mix weighted towards small sites. The roof area, and therefore most of the generation, sits with the 7 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.
Send us the school postcode
Lenzie Consulting Ltd arranges roof surveys for schools across Cambridgeshire. 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 St Neots trusts ask before a survey
- How much would a school roof near St Neots generate?
- Modelled at 898 kWh per kWp a year, a 210 kWp array on a St Neots school models at about 188,600 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 St Neots?
- It goes somewhere, just not into the timetable. 25.5 percent of the St Neots 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 UK Power Networks, or a sign the array is too big. We test which before sizing anything.
- Which network operator handles the connection at a St Neots school?
- Applications go to UK Power Networks, who run the network across Cambridgeshire. 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 Bedford 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 Bedford on siting and design. Listed buildings and conservation areas are the usual exceptions. We put the position to Bedford before a design is finalised.
- How many schools are there around St Neots?
- Huntingdonshire has 74 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register, with 24,299 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.