Specialist solar panels for schools in Falmouth
A school roof in Falmouth makes 6.2 times as much in June as it does in December, and the school year runs against that curve rather than with it. What we come back with is the usable roof area, the modelled output against your meter data, and the routes schools use to pay for it.
226,300 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 Falmouth- 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.
School rooftop solar across Cornwall
A one kilowatt-peak array on a shallow pitched roof in Falmouth models at 943 kWh a year, from modelled irradiation of 1,203 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 6 percent above the mean across the towns we cover, which is about as strong as a UK school roof gets.
Scaled up, a 240 kWp array, sized to what the nearest school scheme on record applied for, 8 miles away at Truro, models at about 226,300 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 57,300 kWh landing in July and August and roughly 11,300 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.
Falmouth ranks 2 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.
What the planning record shows around Falmouth
There is no school entry for the TR11 postcode district in the Renewable Energy Planning Database. The register is dependable for anything from a megawatt upward and incomplete below it, and a school array is usually nearer a fifth of a megawatt, so this says more about the threshold than about Falmouth.
The nearest education scheme on the record is 8 miles from Falmouth, at Truro: 240 kWp at Sir Ben Ainslie Sports Centre, Trennick Lane, applicant Truro School, which holds consent and is awaiting construction. That is someone else's application, not ours, and it is here because it shows what Cornwall planning has already accepted at an education site. Source: Renewable Energy Planning Database, Q1 2026.
The summer holiday problem for a Falmouth school
25.3 percent of the annual output modelled for Falmouth arrives in the two months a school uses least (EU PVGIS v5.2). Term ends in the third week of July and the buildings stay largely empty until September. 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.
The inverse holds at the other end. December and January together return only 5 percent of the year, and those are the months with the heating, the lighting and the full timetable all running at once. The roof makes 6.2 times as much in June as it does in December, and August alone outproduces December by about 5.3 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.
Nationally this comes out at about 49 percent of annual generation falling on a session day. A business open every weekday sees roughly 71 percent. The 22 point gap is what a school appraisal has to absorb, and it is much the same in Falmouth as anywhere else.
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.
The conclusion is not that a Falmouth school should do nothing. It is that the array should be sized to the load that survives the holidays, which is usually the server room, the catering refrigeration, the ventilation and the hot water, plus whatever the site lets out over the summer. Anything above that line needs storage or an export agreement with National Grid Electricity Distribution to earn its keep.
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 | 26 | 17 | 9 |
| Feb | 15 | 42 | 23 | 20 |
| Mar | 21 | 76 | 51 | 25 |
| Apr | 12 | 111 | 44 | 67 |
| May | 17 | 127 | 70 | 57 |
| Jun | 21 | 130 | 91 | 39 |
| Jul | 11 | 127 | 45 | 82 |
| Aug | 0 | 112 | 0 | 112 |
| Sep | 20 | 87 | 58 | 29 |
| Oct | 17 | 54 | 30 | 24 |
| Nov | 21 | 31 | 22 | 9 |
| Dec | 15 | 21 | 10 | 11 |
| Year | 190 | 944 | 461 | 483 |
How many schools Cornwall has
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. A ratio of 7.7 to one tells you where the roof area is. It is not with the 238 primaries, which mostly offer a hall and a teaching block each, but with the larger sites that were built with a sports hall and a dining block attached.
Where a multi-academy trust holds several of those sites, surveying the estate in one pass beats taking a roof at a time. The design work, the connection applications and the procurement paperwork are the same job repeated, and a trust that runs them together gets a better answer on all three.
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).
Start with the Falmouth roof
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.
Questions governors ask us about Falmouth schools
- Is there enough sun around Falmouth for this to be worth doing?
- The model gives 943 kWh a year for every kWp installed at this latitude, so a 240 kWp array comes out at roughly 226,300 kWh a year before shading. It needs about 713 square metres of clear roof once walkways and rooflight setbacks are allowed for. Source: EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss.
- Does a Falmouth school waste its generation in August?
- 25.3 percent of the modelled annual output for Falmouth falls in July and August, when the buildings are closed for most of six weeks (EU PVGIS v5.2). It does not go to waste, but it only has three places to go: the base load that runs regardless, such as servers, catering refrigeration and ventilation; storage; or export under an agreement with National Grid Electricity Distribution. We model all three against your half hourly data before an array is sized.
- Will the network around Falmouth accept the export?
- National Grid Electricity Distribution is the distribution network operator for Cornwall. Anything above 3.68 kW per phase connects under G99, and the application fixes the export limit. On a school site the incoming supply is often the binding constraint rather than the roof, so we ask that question before anyone sizes an array.
- Is planning permission needed for panels on a school in Falmouth?
- Usually permitted development covers a roof array on a school, with prior approval from Cornwall needed above a capacity threshold. A ground mounted array in the grounds is a different question and much more likely to need a full application. We check both before design sign-off.
- How many schools are there around Falmouth?
- 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.