How much would a school roof near Bude generate?

Modelled at 929 kWh per kWp a year, a 410 kWp array on a Bude school models at about 380,900 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 Bude?

It goes somewhere, just not into the timetable. 25 percent of the Bude 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 Bude school?

Applications go to National Grid Electricity Distribution, who run the network across Cornwall. 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.

How many schools are there around Bude?

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 Bude

A kilowatt-peak on a Bude school roof models at 929 kWh a year, above the mean across the towns we cover, and the roofs it applies to are mostly carrying nothing. The survey records sheet type, remaining life, purlin spacing and the state of the incoming supply, and the model runs off your own meter data rather than an average.

25% of the modelled year lands in July and August, on a roof that returns 929 kWh per kWp a year. The worked example below runs at 410 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.

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

Drawing Illustrative Cornwall estate

Blocks 4, 3 with array

Array about 345 kWp

Yield about 321,000 kWh/yr

Frontage about 90 m / Rev A / Cornwall

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.

Bude / Cornwall

A two storey 1970s school block with a shallow pitched roof covered in solar panels, empty playground in front and a playing field beyond — School buildings of the kind we survey across Cornwall. 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 Bude models at 929 kWh a year, from modelled irradiation of 1,173 kWh per square metre in the plane of the array (EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss). That is around 5 percent above the mean across the towns we cover, which is about as strong as a UK school roof gets.

Scaled up, a 410 kWp array, sized to what the nearest school scheme on record applied for, 27 miles away at Barnstaple, models at about 380,900 kWh a year before shading, and needs roughly 1,218 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 95,200 kWh landing in July and August and roughly 18,300 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 Bude against the rest of Cornwall

Penzance979
Falmouth943
Newquay940
Truro940
St Austell936
Bodmin929
Bude929
Camborne921

Bude ranks 7 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 Bude schools

The Renewable Energy Planning Database holds no school scheme for Bude and the area around it. 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 27 miles away at Barnstaple: West Buckland School, West Buckland, a 410 kWp ground mounted array applied for by West Buckland 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 Devon. Source: Renewable Energy Planning Database, Q1 2026.

Why demand in Bude falls as the roof peaks

The generating year and the school year are out of step in Bude. July and August carry 25 percent of the modelled output (EU PVGIS v5.2), and the site is closed for most of those nine weeks. May 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 4.8 percent of output falls in December and January, the two months when a Bude school is fully occupied and its heating and lighting are at their heaviest. The roof makes 6.1 times as much in May as it does in December, and August alone outproduces December by about 5.1 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 Bude changes that ratio much, but plenty about your own site changes what to do with it.

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.

A Bude 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 full treatment of the school year against the generation curve on the home page, and what it does to a payback figure under costs.

FIG. 2 A Bude 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 Bude, 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	24	15	9
Feb	15	42	23	20
Mar	21	77	52	25
Apr	12	112	45	67
May	17	128	70	58
Jun	21	127	89	38
Jul	11	125	44	81
Aug	0	107	0	107
Sep	20	84	56	28
Oct	17	52	29	23
Nov	21	29	20	9
Dec	15	21	10	11
Year	190	928	453	475

Each bar is one month's output per kWp, divided at the school gate. The May bar is 6.1 times the December one and the timetable runs the other way round. We apportion a month's generation evenly over its days, having no half hourly data for your meter. 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

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.

Grid connection through National Grid Electricity Distribution

Connections around Bude 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.

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

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 Bude trusts ask before a survey

How much would a school roof near Bude generate?: Modelled at 929 kWh per kWp a year, a 410 kWp array on a Bude school models at about 380,900 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 Bude?: It goes somewhere, just not into the timetable. 25 percent of the Bude 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 Bude school?: Applications go to National Grid Electricity Distribution, who run the network across Cornwall. 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.
How many schools are there around Bude?: 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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