Solar panels for schools across Derbyshire

The school estate in Derbyshire

Derbyshire has 431 open state-funded schools and colleges teaching 127,109 pupils, spread across 7 local authorities. Source: DfE Get Information About Schools.

Of those, 361 primary, 53 secondary, 15 special and 2 further education. The phase mix is what sets the usable roof area across a county: secondary sites and colleges carry the sports halls, dining blocks and flat roofs, while primaries offer a hall and a teaching block each and suit arrays sized to the base load.

School rooftop solar and what a Derbyshire roof models

Modelled yield is not flat across Derbyshire. Long Eaton comes out at 866 kWh per kWp a year against 805 at Buxton, a spread of 61 kWh per kWp. On a 345 kWp school array that difference is about 21,045 kWh a year, which is worth checking before anyone accepts a county-wide saving figure. Source: EU PVGIS v5.2.

Every town page below carries the same arithmetic for that town, including the share of the year that lands in July and August, which is the number a governing body should see before a saving figure.

Solar PV for academy trusts on the Derbyshire planning record

The Renewable Energy Planning Database records 2 school and college solar schemes in Derbyshire, across 2 of the towns we cover. They include Landau Forte College, Fox Street at Derby and Anthony Gell School, Wood Street at Matlock. The median array applied for is 345 kWp.

We were not involved in any of those schemes. They are public planning records, and they are here because what a local authority and a network operator have already accepted for one school is the best available guide to what they will accept for the next. Source: Renewable Energy Planning Database, Q1 2026.

Connections across the county run through National Grid Electricity Distribution. Anything above 3.68 kW per phase needs a G99 application, and on a school site the incoming supply and the size of the existing main switchboard are often the real constraint rather than the roof.