What would a 210 kWp array produce at a Kendal school?

Yes, and the figure matters more than the sunshine. 793 kWh per kWp a year puts a 210 kWp array at around 166,500 kWh, on roughly 624 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 Kendal?

Less is wasted than governors expect, but the figure is worth seeing: 26 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 Electricity North West.

Who do we apply to for export near Kendal?

Only Electricity North West 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 South Lakeland?

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 South Lakeland. We confirm it either way.

How many schools are there around Kendal?

Westmorland and Furness has 147 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register, with 29,906 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 Kendal

26 percent of what a Kendal 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.

166,500 kWh a year, modelled for a 210 kWp array on roughly 624 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 Kendal

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

Drawing Illustrative estate, not a Kendal school

Blocks 4, 3 with array

Array about 345 kWp

Yield about 274,000 kWh/yr

Frontage about 90 m / Rev A / LA9

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.

Kendal / Cumbria

A school on the edge of a Greater Manchester town, solar arrays on its roofs and low Pennine hills beyond — School buildings of the kind we survey across North West. Not a named school and not our work.

Solar PV for academy trusts across Cumbria

A one kilowatt-peak array on a shallow pitched roof in Kendal models at 793 kWh a year, from modelled irradiation of 1,014 kWh per square metre in the plane of the array (EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss). 10 percent below our mean puts Kendal 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 210 kWp array, sized to what the nearest school scheme on record applied for, 37 miles away at Whitehaven, models at about 166,500 kWh a year before shading, and needs roughly 624 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 43,300 kWh landing in July and August and roughly 6,200 kWh across December and January. Electricity North West 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 Kendal against the rest of Cumbria

Barrow-in-Furness893
Whitehaven855
Workington835
Carlisle806
Penrith794
Kendal793

Kendal ranks 6 of 6 towns we cover in Cumbria on modelled yield, against a national mean of 886 kWh per kWp. The county runs from 793 to 893, a spread of 100 kWh per kWp. On a 500 kWp array that is about 50,000 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 Kendal schools

No school or college solar scheme appears in the LA9 postcode district in the Renewable Energy Planning Database. That is a reporting threshold rather than a verdict. The database records generating stations from one megawatt upward reliably and smaller ones patchily, and almost every school array is a fraction of that, so a roof full of panels on a Kendal secondary could be generating today without ever reaching it.

The closest recorded one is about 37 miles away at Whitehaven: Whitehaven Academy, a 210 kWp roof mounted array applied for by The Whitehaven Academy, 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 Cumbria. Source: Renewable Energy Planning Database, Q1 2026.

Why demand in Kendal falls as the roof peaks

The generating year and the school year are out of step in Kendal. July and August carry 26 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 14.8 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 3.7 percent of output falls in December and January, the two months when a Kendal school is fully occupied and its heating and lighting are at their heaviest. The roof makes 9 times as much in May as it does in December, and August alone outproduces December by about 7.2 to one. 76 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.

And the week has the same hole in it. Two days in seven the site is closed altogether, at no cost to the generation, which is part of why the session day share sits where it does. Weekend lettings are the one lever a Kendal school has over that, and they are worth counting properly.

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 Electricity North West 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 Kendal 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 Kendal, split by whether the day is a school session day. Across the year 48 percent of generation lands while the school is open.
Month	Session days	Output, kWh per kWp	School open	School closed
Jan	20	16	10	6
Feb	15	33	18	15
Mar	21	63	43	20
Apr	12	97	39	58
May	17	117	64	53
Jun	21	114	80	34
Jul	11	113	40	73
Aug	0	93	0	93
Sep	20	70	47	23
Oct	17	41	22	19
Nov	21	22	15	7
Dec	15	13	6	7
Year	190	792	384	408

Per kWp installed, month by month, separating generation while the school is open from generation at a weekend or in the holidays. 76 percent of the Kendal 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 Electricity North West

Electricity North West operates the distribution network across Cumbria, 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 Cumbria the planning database records 86 solar schemes totalling 574 MW, of which 17 are operational (REPD Q1 2026).

The school estate in Westmorland and Furness

Westmorland and Furness has 147 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register teaching 29,906 pupils between them. Source: DfE Get Information About Schools.

The split is 123 primary, 20 secondary, 3 special and 1 further education, at an average of 203 pupils a site. Read 6.2 primaries per secondary as a sequencing hint rather than a statistic. A primary is a single survey visit and a modest array; a secondary is several roofs of different ages on one site, and that is where both the area and the complications are.

A trust holding more than one of these sites should look at them together. Grouping the surveys turns the grid question, the funding question and the procurement route into one exercise rather than four, and it usually changes which roof goes first.

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 Cumbria. 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 Kendal trusts ask before a survey

What would a 210 kWp array produce at a Kendal school?: Yes, and the figure matters more than the sunshine. 793 kWh per kWp a year puts a 210 kWp array at around 166,500 kWh, on roughly 624 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 Kendal?: Less is wasted than governors expect, but the figure is worth seeing: 26 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 Electricity North West.
Who do we apply to for export near Kendal?: Only Electricity North West 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 South Lakeland?: 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 South Lakeland. We confirm it either way.
How many schools are there around Kendal?: Westmorland and Furness has 147 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register, with 29,906 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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