Solar panels for schools across Devon

The school estate in Devon

Devon has 397 open state-funded schools and colleges teaching 127,954 pupils, spread across 7 local authorities. Source: DfE Get Information About Schools.

Of those, 315 primary, 59 secondary, 19 special and 4 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.

Solar for education buildings and what a Devon roof models

Modelled yield is not flat across Devon. Paignton comes out at 961 kWh per kWp a year against 903 at Tiverton, a spread of 58 kWh per kWp. On a 335 kWp school array that difference is about 19,430 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 Devon planning record

The Renewable Energy Planning Database records 2 school and college solar schemes in Devon, across 2 of the towns we cover. They include South Devon College, Spots Hall at Paignton and West Buckland School, West Buckland at Barnstaple. The median array applied for is 335 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.