Specialist solar panels for schools in Durham
Collingwood College, South Road sits on the planning record near Durham at 0 kWp, which makes the question here less whether a school roof works and more what yours would carry. We start with the roof build up and the age of the covering, because across a school estate that is usually what decides which block goes first.
823 kWh per kWp a year at this latitude, so a 460 kWp array, the size applied for at the nearest school scheme on record, models at about 378,600 kWh. Source: EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss.
Book a roof survey in Durham- 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.
Which schools around DH1 have applied
The Renewable Energy Planning Database records 1 school and college solar scheme in the DH1 postcode district. A college, Collingwood College, South Road, applied for an unstated capacity roof mounted and the scheme holds consent and is awaiting construction. The applicant on record is Howarth Litchfield Partnership.
None of these are ours. They are entries in the public planning record, reproduced here because a consented array at a school down the road is a better guide to your own prospects than any national average. Source: Renewable Energy Planning Database, Q1 2026.
One thing to be clear about: the drawing at the head of this page is an illustrative estate, not Collingwood College, South Road and not a survey of anyone's roof. What we know about the scheme above is only what the public planning record says.
Every one of them is a college, which is worth knowing: a college runs longer days and more plant than a school, and it usually has the flat roof area to match.
| Site on record | Applicant on record | Size | Mounting | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Collingwood College, South Road | Howarth Litchfield Partnership | n/a | Roof | Awaiting Construction |
Solar for education buildings across County Durham
A one kilowatt-peak array on a shallow pitched roof in Durham models at 823 kWh a year, from modelled irradiation of 1,048 kWh per square metre in the plane of the array (EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss). 7 percent below our mean puts Durham at the weaker end of the range, which raises the premium on self consumption and lowers the value of anything that leaves the site.
Scaled up, a 460 kWp array, sized to what the nearest school scheme on record applied for, 9 miles away at Peterlee, models at about 378,600 kWh a year before shading, and needs roughly 1,366 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 99,200 kWh landing in July and August and roughly 15,500 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.
Durham ranks 2 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.
Term dates against the Durham generation curve
A Durham school roof generates most in the weeks its buildings are closed. 26.2 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 14.5 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 7.9 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.
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.
Daily shape compounds it. A school's load climbs from breakfast club, holds through the teaching day and falls away from about three in the afternoon, while generation is still strong until six in high summer. That is why we size against half hourly meter data rather than against annual consumption: the annual figure hides both problems.
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 Northern Powergrid pays for the surplus that is left.
We set out the complete version of the term time arithmetic 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 | 19 | 12 | 7 |
| Feb | 15 | 34 | 18 | 16 |
| Mar | 21 | 67 | 45 | 22 |
| Apr | 12 | 98 | 39 | 59 |
| May | 17 | 119 | 65 | 54 |
| Jun | 21 | 112 | 78 | 34 |
| Jul | 11 | 117 | 42 | 75 |
| Aug | 0 | 99 | 0 | 99 |
| Sep | 20 | 75 | 50 | 25 |
| Oct | 17 | 44 | 24 | 20 |
| Nov | 21 | 24 | 17 | 7 |
| Dec | 15 | 15 | 7 | 8 |
| Year | 190 | 823 | 397 | 426 |
Grid connection through Northern Powergrid
Northern Powergrid operates the distribution network across County Durham, 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 County Durham the planning database records 85 solar schemes totalling 1168 MW, of which 9 are operational (REPD Q1 2026).
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.
Book a roof survey at your Durham school
The first survey answers three questions at once: what the roofs carry, what they generate against your own timetable, and how a Durham school pays for it. Send the postcode, an approximate roof area per block and half hourly meter data if the school can get it from its supplier.
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.
Durham school solar, answered
- What would a 460 kWp array produce at a Durham school?
- Yes, and the figure matters more than the sunshine. 823 kWh per kWp a year puts a 460 kWp array at around 378,600 kWh, on roughly 1,366 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 Durham?
- Less is wasted than governors expect, but the figure is worth seeing: 26.2 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 Northern Powergrid.
- Who do we apply to for export near Durham?
- Only Northern Powergrid 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 County Durham?
- 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 County Durham. We confirm it either way.
- Has a school near DH1 already done this?
- One school scheme is on record in this postcode district, including a 0 kWp array at Collingwood College, South Road that holds consent and is awaiting construction. We were not involved in it. It is a public planning record, and it matters less as proof that solar works than as evidence of what this authority and this network operator have already accepted. Source: Renewable Energy Planning Database, Q1 2026.
- How many schools are there around Durham?
- 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.