Is there enough sun around Barnstaple for this to be worth doing?

The model gives 908 kWh a year for every kWp installed at this latitude, so a 410 kWp array comes out at roughly 372,300 kWh a year before shading. It needs about 1,218 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 Barnstaple school waste its generation in August?

24.9 percent of the modelled annual output for Barnstaple 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 National Grid Electricity Distribution. We model all three against your half hourly data before an array is sized.

Will the network around Barnstaple accept the export?

National Grid Electricity Distribution is the distribution network operator for Devon. 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 Barnstaple?

Usually permitted development covers a roof array on a school, with prior approval from North Devon 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.

Has a school near EX32 already done this?

One school scheme is on record in this postcode district, including a 410 kWp array at West Buckland School, West Buckland 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 Barnstaple?

North Devon has 55 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register, with 13,749 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 Barnstaple

A 410 kWp array at West Buckland School, West Buckland is the nearest school scheme on the planning record, and it holds consent and is awaiting construction. The survey records sheet type, remaining life, purlin spacing and the state of the incoming supply, and the model runs off your own meter data rather than an average.

372,300 kWh a year, modelled for a 410 kWp array on roughly 1,218 sqm of clear roof. That is the median size schools around Barnstaple have applied for. Source: EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss.

Book a roof survey in Barnstaple

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

Drawing Illustrative estate, not a Barnstaple school

Blocks 4, 3 with array

Array about 345 kWp

Yield about 313,000 kWh/yr

Frontage about 90 m / Rev A / EX32

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.

Barnstaple / Devon

A school on the edge of a South West market town, solar arrays on its roofs and rolling farmland beyond — School buildings of the kind we survey across South West. Not a named school and not our work.

School solar consented near Barnstaple

The Renewable Energy Planning Database records 1 school and college solar scheme in the EX32 postcode district. West Buckland School, West Buckland is down for a 410 kWp ground mounted array and the application holds consent and is awaiting construction. The applicant on record is West Buckland School.

Those are other organisations' planning applications, not our projects. We list them because a scheme a few miles away tells you what this local authority and this network operator have already accepted for a building very like yours. Source: Renewable Energy Planning Database, Q1 2026.

The plan above the fold is a generic four block estate, drawn to make the scale and the phasing legible. Nobody should read it as West Buckland School, West Buckland or as any other Barnstaple site. Our knowledge of these applications comes entirely from the public record.

The median array applied for here is 410 kWp. At 410 kWp you are covering roughly 1,218 square metres of roof once walkways, edge zones and rooflight setbacks come out, which on most sites means a sports hall plus one teaching block rather than the whole estate.

Site on record	Applicant on record	Size	Mounting	Status
West Buckland School, West Buckland	West Buckland School	410 kWp	Ground	Awaiting Construction

Solar PV for academy trusts across Devon

A one kilowatt-peak array on a shallow pitched roof in Barnstaple models at 908 kWh a year, from modelled irradiation of 1,155 kWh per square metre in the plane of the array (EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss). That is roughly 2 percent above the mean across the towns we cover, so latitude is working slightly in your favour here.

Scaled up, a 410 kWp array, sized to the median array applied for at schools around Barnstaple itself, models at about 372,300 kWh a year before shading, and needs roughly 1,218 square metres of clear roof. That size is not one we chose. It is what schools in this district have actually applied for.

Spread across the year that is about 92,700 kWh landing in July and August and roughly 17,500 kWh across December and January. National Grid Electricity Distribution 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 Barnstaple against the rest of Devon

Paignton961
Plymouth960
Newton Abbot943
Exeter938
Torquay937
Exmouth937
Barnstaple908
Tiverton903

Barnstaple ranks 7 of 8 towns we cover in Devon on modelled yield, against a national mean of 886 kWh per kWp. The county runs from 903 to 961, a spread of 58 kWh per kWp. On a 500 kWp array that is about 29,000 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

Why demand in Barnstaple falls as the roof peaks

The generating year and the school year are out of step in Barnstaple. July and August carry 24.9 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 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 4.7 percent of output falls in December and January, the two months when a Barnstaple school is fully occupied and its heating and lighting are at their heaviest. The roof makes 6.4 times as much in May as it does in December, and August alone outproduces December by about 5.2 to one. 74 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.

Summed over the year, about 49 percent of what a school roof makes arrives while the school is open. For a business trading every weekday the equivalent is roughly 71 percent. Nothing about Barnstaple changes that ratio much, but plenty about your own site changes what to do with it.

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 Barnstaple school has over that, and they are worth counting properly.

A Barnstaple governing body should read that as a sizing constraint, not a reason to stop. The base load that runs through the holidays, servers, comms, refrigeration, ventilation and hot water, is the floor the array should be built up from, and everything above it has to be justified by storage, export or summer occupancy.

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 Barnstaple 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 Barnstaple, split by whether the day is a school session day. Across the year 49 percent of generation lands while the school is open.
Month	Session days	Output, kWh per kWp	School open	School closed
Jan	20	23	15	8
Feb	15	41	22	19
Mar	21	76	51	25
Apr	12	109	44	65
May	17	127	70	57
Jun	21	123	86	37
Jul	11	123	44	79
Aug	0	103	0	103
Sep	20	81	54	27
Oct	17	51	28	23
Nov	21	29	20	9
Dec	15	20	10	10
Year	190	906	444	462

Per kWp installed, month by month, separating generation while the school is open from generation at a weekend or in the holidays. 74 percent of the Barnstaple 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

The school estate in North Devon

North Devon has 55 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register teaching 13,749 pupils between them. Source: DfE Get Information About Schools.

The split is 47 primary, 6 secondary and 2 special, at an average of 250 pupils a site. A ratio of 7.8 to one tells you where the roof area is. It is not with the 47 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.

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.

Grid connection through National Grid Electricity Distribution

National Grid Electricity Distribution is the network operator here, and their answer on export capacity shapes the design. Any commercial array above 3.68 kW per phase connects under G99 rather than G98, and the application fixes what you are allowed to push back onto the network. If the local network is tight, limiting export rarely breaks the case here: most of the generation is consumed on site while the building is working.

Across Devon the planning database records 248 solar schemes totalling 1451 MW, of which 90 are operational (REPD Q1 2026).

Book the survey

Send us the school postcode

Roof condition decides the order of works on most school estates, so that is where we start. Send us the postcode and a rough roof area, with twelve months of half hourly readings if you have them, and we come back with usable area, modelled output against your own load, and the funding routes.

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 Barnstaple trusts ask before a survey

Is there enough sun around Barnstaple for this to be worth doing?: The model gives 908 kWh a year for every kWp installed at this latitude, so a 410 kWp array comes out at roughly 372,300 kWh a year before shading. It needs about 1,218 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 Barnstaple school waste its generation in August?: 24.9 percent of the modelled annual output for Barnstaple 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 National Grid Electricity Distribution. We model all three against your half hourly data before an array is sized.
Will the network around Barnstaple accept the export?: National Grid Electricity Distribution is the distribution network operator for Devon. 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 Barnstaple?: Usually permitted development covers a roof array on a school, with prior approval from North Devon 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.
Has a school near EX32 already done this?: One school scheme is on record in this postcode district, including a 410 kWp array at West Buckland School, West Buckland 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 Barnstaple?: North Devon has 55 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register, with 13,749 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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