What would a 240 kWp array produce at a Bodmin school?

Yes, and the figure matters more than the sunshine. 929 kWh per kWp a year puts a 240 kWp array at around 223,000 kWh, on roughly 713 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 Bodmin?

Less is wasted than governors expect, but the figure is worth seeing: 25.1 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 Bodmin?

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.

Do we need planning permission in Cornwall?

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 Cornwall. We confirm it either way.

How many schools are there around Bodmin?

Cornwall has 277 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register, with 71,014 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.

Specialist solar panels for schools in Bodmin

25.1 percent of what a Bodmin 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.

223,000 kWh a year, modelled for a 240 kWp array on roughly 713 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 Bodmin

1 teaching block
2 hall and kitchen
3 sports hall
4 1960s block, no array
first phase
later phase

Drawing Illustrative estate, not a Bodmin school

Blocks 4, 3 with array

Array about 345 kWp

Yield about 321,000 kWh/yr

Frontage about 90 m / Rev A / PL31

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.

Bodmin / Cornwall

A school on the edge of a South West market town, solar arrays on its roofs and rolling farmland beyond — School buildings of the kind we survey across South West. Not a named school and not our work.

Solar PV for academy trusts across Cornwall

A one kilowatt-peak array on a shallow pitched roof in Bodmin models at 929 kWh a year, from modelled irradiation of 1,183 kWh per square metre in the plane of the array (EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss). At 5 percent above our mean, Bodmin is at the strong end of the range, and a roof here earns more for every square metre than the same roof would further north.

Scaled up, a 240 kWp array, sized to what the nearest school scheme on record applied for, 20 miles away at Truro, models at about 223,000 kWh a year before shading, and needs roughly 713 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 56,000 kWh landing in July and August and roughly 11,600 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.

FIG. 1 Bodmin against the rest of Cornwall

Penzance979
Falmouth943
Newquay940
Truro940
St Austell936
Bodmin929
Bude929
Camborne921

Bodmin ranks 6 of 8 towns we cover in Cornwall on modelled yield, against a national mean of 886 kWh per kWp. The county runs from 921 to 979, a spread of 58 kWh per kWp. On a 500 kWp array that is about 29,000 kWh a year between the strongest and weakest town in the county.

Bars are zero based, so length is proportional to the figure. Where a county is flat, that is the finding: latitude is not the lever, the timetable is. Source: EU PVGIS v5.2, modelled per town

The planning position for Bodmin schools

The Renewable Energy Planning Database holds no school scheme for the PL31 postcode district. Read that as a gap in the record, not a gap in the roofs: the database is reliable above one megawatt and thin below it, and a school array is typically a fifth of a megawatt.

The closest recorded one is about 20 miles away at Truro: Sir Ben Ainslie Sports Centre, Trennick Lane, a 240 kWp roof mounted array applied for by Truro School, which holds consent and is awaiting construction. We were not involved in it. We cite it because it is a public record of what has cleared planning in this part of Cornwall. Source: Renewable Energy Planning Database, Q1 2026.

Why demand in Bodmin falls as the roof peaks

The generating year and the school year are out of step in Bodmin. July and August carry 25.1 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 13.7 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 5.2 percent of output falls in December and January, the two months when a Bodmin school is fully occupied and its heating and lighting are at their heaviest. The roof makes 5.8 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.

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.

Then there is the afternoon. From roughly three o'clock the building empties while the roof is still working, so a system sized on annual consumption will over-generate in exactly the hours nobody is there. We size on half hourly data for that reason.

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 National Grid Electricity Distribution pays for the surplus that is left.

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.

FIG. 2 A Bodmin roof against the English school year

generated while the school is open
generated at a weekend or in the holidays

The same figures as a table

Monthly output for a 1 kWp array in Bodmin, split by whether the day is a school session day. Across the year 49 percent of generation lands while the school is open.
Month	Session days	Output, kWh per kWp	School open	School closed
Jan	20	26	17	9
Feb	15	43	23	20
Mar	21	76	51	25
Apr	12	110	44	66
May	17	125	69	56
Jun	21	127	89	38
Jul	11	124	44	80
Aug	0	109	0	109
Sep	20	85	57	28
Oct	17	52	29	23
Nov	21	31	22	9
Dec	15	22	11	11
Year	190	930	456	474

Per kWp installed, month by month, separating generation while the school is open from generation at a weekend or in the holidays. 73 percent of the Bodmin year sits between April and September, most of which is term time; it is the tail of that period, the last week of July and all of August, that the school is not there for. The daily split is a flat apportionment of each month, not a metered one. Session days follow a typical English school year of 190 days. Your own trust or authority may differ by a few days either way. Source: EU PVGIS v5.2, session days from a typical school calendar

Grid connection through National Grid Electricity Distribution

National Grid Electricity Distribution operates the distribution network across Cornwall, so the export application goes to them. Anything larger than 3.68 kW per phase falls under G99, which means an application before commissioning rather than a notification afterwards. A constrained network is not the end of a scheme. Capping export costs little when the building already absorbs most of what the roof produces.

Across Cornwall the planning database records 174 solar schemes totalling 1116 MW, of which 88 are operational (REPD Q1 2026).

The school estate in Cornwall

Cornwall has 277 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register teaching 71,014 pupils between them. Source: DfE Get Information About Schools.

The split is 238 primary, 31 secondary, 5 special and 3 further education, at an average of 256 pupils a site. That is 7.7 primaries for every secondary, which is the ratio that matters for a roof: a primary of a few hundred pupils usually offers a hall roof and one teaching block, while a secondary site carries a sports hall, a dining block and several flat roofs.

If your trust holds several of them, the sequencing question comes before the sizing question. Roof age, covering type and the state of the incoming supply vary block by block across an estate, and that is normally what sets the order of works.

Aerial view of a school site with teaching blocks of several different ages, a sports hall and a playing field, solar arrays on two of the flat roofs — A school site with blocks of several ages, which is the usual starting point for a trust estate survey.

Book the survey

Send us the school postcode

Lenzie Consulting Ltd arranges roof surveys for schools across Cornwall. 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 Bodmin trusts ask before a survey

What would a 240 kWp array produce at a Bodmin school?: Yes, and the figure matters more than the sunshine. 929 kWh per kWp a year puts a 240 kWp array at around 223,000 kWh, on roughly 713 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 Bodmin?: Less is wasted than governors expect, but the figure is worth seeing: 25.1 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 Bodmin?: 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.
Do we need planning permission in Cornwall?: 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 Cornwall. We confirm it either way.
How many schools are there around Bodmin?: Cornwall has 277 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register, with 71,014 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.

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