Specialist solar panels for schools in Consett
What decides a solar scheme at a Consett school is how much of the output the site uses itself, not how much the roof makes. We arrange the roof survey, model the output against the school's own half hourly consumption, and set out the funding routes.
26.4% of the modelled year lands in July and August, on a roof that returns 811 kWh per kWp a year. The worked example below runs at 270 kWp, the median size schools across County Durham have applied for. Source: EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss.
Book a roof survey in Consett- 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 for education buildings across County Durham
A one kilowatt-peak array on a shallow pitched roof in Consett models at 811 kWh a year, from modelled irradiation of 1,030 kWh per square metre in the plane of the array (EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss). That is about 8 percent below the mean across the towns we cover, so the case at this latitude rests almost entirely on using the output on site rather than exporting it.
Scaled up, a 270 kWp array, sized to the median array applied for at schools across County Durham, models at about 219,000 kWh a year before shading, and needs roughly 802 square metres of clear roof. We use that size because it is what schools across County Durham have applied for, not because it suits the arithmetic.
Spread across the year that is about 57,800 kWh landing in July and August and roughly 9,000 kWh across December and January. Northern Powergrid 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.
Consett ranks 6 of 6 towns we cover in County Durham on modelled yield, against a national mean of 886 kWh per kWp. The county runs from 811 to 845, a spread of 34 kWh per kWp. Within County Durham that difference is small enough to ignore: where the building sits is not what decides this scheme, your consumption pattern is.
School solar on record near DH8
There is no school entry for the DH8 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 Consett.
Look 12 miles out and there is one: Collingwood College, South Road in Durham, 0 kWp, applied for by Howarth Litchfield Partnership, which holds consent and is awaiting construction. None of our doing. It is a public planning record, and the nearest evidence available of how an application like yours is treated around here. Source: Renewable Energy Planning Database, Q1 2026.
Term dates against the Consett generation curve
A Consett school roof generates most in the weeks its buildings are closed. 26.4 percent of the modelled year lands in July and August alone (EU PVGIS v5.2), and the summer holiday takes roughly six of those nine weeks out of the timetable. May is the strongest single month here at 14.4 percent of the annual total, which is still term time, and that works slightly in your favour against towns whose curve peaks in July.
Winter reverses it. December and January between them return 4.1 percent of the modelled year, and that is when the heating, the lighting and a full register are all drawing at the same time. The roof makes 7.8 times as much in May as it does in December, and August alone outproduces December by about 6.6 to one. 75 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 Consett as anywhere else.
The daily curve does the same thing in miniature. Load drops sharply after about three o'clock, generation does not, so the last three hours of a summer afternoon are pushing into an empty building unless something absorbs them. Half hourly meter data is the only way to see how much.
The conclusion is not that a Consett 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 Northern Powergrid to earn its keep.
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 | 18 | 12 | 6 |
| Feb | 15 | 34 | 18 | 16 |
| Mar | 21 | 66 | 45 | 21 |
| Apr | 12 | 97 | 39 | 58 |
| May | 17 | 117 | 64 | 53 |
| Jun | 21 | 110 | 77 | 33 |
| Jul | 11 | 115 | 41 | 74 |
| Aug | 0 | 99 | 0 | 99 |
| Sep | 20 | 74 | 49 | 25 |
| Oct | 17 | 42 | 23 | 19 |
| Nov | 21 | 24 | 17 | 7 |
| Dec | 15 | 15 | 7 | 8 |
| Year | 190 | 811 | 392 | 419 |
County Durham schools, phase by phase
County Durham has 262 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register teaching 69,907 pupils between them. Source: DfE Get Information About Schools.
The split is 218 primary, 30 secondary, 9 special and 5 further education, at an average of 267 pupils a site. A ratio of 7.3 to one tells you where the roof area is. It is not with the 218 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 Northern Powergrid
Connections around Consett are handled by Northern Powergrid, 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 County Durham the planning database records 85 solar schemes totalling 1168 MW, of which 9 are operational (REPD Q1 2026).
Book a roof survey at your Consett school
A survey in Consett starts with three things from you. Give us the postcode, the approximate roof area and, if you can get it from your supplier, twelve months of half hourly readings. What comes back is a usable area figure per block, output modelled against your own load rather than an average, and the ways a Consett school can pay for it.
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.
Consett school solar, answered
- Is there enough sun around Consett for this to be worth doing?
- The model gives 811 kWh a year for every kWp installed at this latitude, so a 270 kWp array comes out at roughly 219,000 kWh a year before shading. It needs about 802 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 Consett school waste its generation in August?
- 26.4 percent of the modelled annual output for Consett 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 Northern Powergrid. We model all three against your half hourly data before an array is sized.
- Will the network around Consett accept the export?
- Northern Powergrid is the distribution network operator for County Durham. 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 Consett?
- Usually permitted development covers a roof array on a school, with prior approval from County Durham 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 Consett?
- County Durham has 262 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register, with 69,907 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.