Solar panels for schools across Cornwall

The school estate in Cornwall

Cornwall has 277 open state-funded schools and colleges teaching 71,014 pupils, spread across 1 local authorities. Source: DfE Get Information About Schools.

Of those, 238 primary, 31 secondary, 5 special and 3 further education. The phase mix is what sets the usable roof area across a county: secondary sites and colleges carry the sports halls, dining blocks and flat roofs, while primaries offer a hall and a teaching block each and suit arrays sized to the base load.

Solar for education buildings and what a Cornwall roof models

Modelled yield is not flat across Cornwall. Penzance comes out at 979 kWh per kWp a year against 921 at Camborne, a spread of 58 kWh per kWp. On a 240 kWp school array that difference is about 13,920 kWh a year, which is worth checking before anyone accepts a county-wide saving figure. Source: EU PVGIS v5.2.

Every town page below carries the same arithmetic for that town, including the share of the year that lands in July and August, which is the number a governing body should see before a saving figure.

Solar PV for academy trusts on the Cornwall planning record

The Renewable Energy Planning Database records 1 school and college solar scheme in Cornwall, at Truro. It is Sir Ben Ainslie Sports Centre, Trennick Lane, applied for by Truro School. The median array applied for is 240 kWp.

We were not involved in that scheme. It is a public planning record, and it is here because what a local authority and a network operator have already accepted for one school is the best available guide to what they will accept for the next. Source: Renewable Energy Planning Database, Q1 2026.

Connections across the county run through National Grid Electricity Distribution. Anything above 3.68 kW per phase needs a G99 application, and on a school site the incoming supply and the size of the existing main switchboard are often the real constraint rather than the roof.