Specialist solar panels for schools in Newton Abbot
A kilowatt-peak on a Newton Abbot school roof models at 943 kWh a year, above the mean across the towns we cover, and the roofs it applies to are mostly carrying nothing. 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.
25.6% of the modelled year lands in July and August, on a roof that returns 943 kWh per kWp a year. The worked example below runs at 260 kWp, 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 Newton Abbot- 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.
Solar PV for academy trusts across Devon
A one kilowatt-peak array on a shallow pitched roof in Newton Abbot models at 943 kWh a year, from modelled irradiation of 1,200 kWh per square metre in the plane of the array (EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss). That is around 6 percent above the mean across the towns we cover, which is about as strong as a UK school roof gets.
Scaled up, a 260 kWp array, sized to what the nearest school scheme on record applied for, 7 miles away at Paignton, models at about 245,200 kWh a year before shading, and needs roughly 772 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 62,800 kWh landing in July and August and roughly 11,000 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.
Newton Abbot ranks 3 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.
The planning position for Newton Abbot schools
The Renewable Energy Planning Database holds no school scheme for the TQ12 postcode district. Read that as a gap in the record, not a gap in the roofs: the database is reliable above one megawatt and thin below it, and a school array is typically a fifth of a megawatt.
The closest recorded one is about 7 miles away at Paignton: South Devon College, Spots Hall, a 260 kWp roof mounted array applied for by South Devon College, which was withdrawn before determination. We were not involved in it. We cite it because it is a public record of what has cleared planning in this part of Devon. Source: Renewable Energy Planning Database, Q1 2026.
Why demand in Newton Abbot falls as the roof peaks
The generating year and the school year are out of step in Newton Abbot. July and August carry 25.6 percent of the modelled output (EU PVGIS v5.2), and the site is closed for most of those nine weeks. June is the strongest single month here at 13.8 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 4.5 percent of output falls in December and January, the two months when a Newton Abbot school is fully occupied and its heating and lighting are at their heaviest. The roof makes 7.2 times as much in June as it does in December, and August alone outproduces December by about 6.2 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.
Nationally this comes out at about 49 percent of annual generation falling on a session day. A business open every weekday sees roughly 71 percent. The 22 point gap is what a school appraisal has to absorb, and it is much the same in Newton Abbot as anywhere else.
Then there is the afternoon. From roughly three o'clock the building empties while the roof is still working, so a system sized on annual consumption will over-generate in exactly the hours nobody is there. We size on half hourly data for that reason.
The conclusion is not that a Newton Abbot school should do nothing. It is that the array should be sized to the load that survives the holidays, which is usually the server room, the catering refrigeration, the ventilation and the hot water, plus whatever the site lets out over the summer. Anything above that line needs storage or an export agreement with National Grid Electricity Distribution to earn its keep.
We set out the full treatment of the school year against the generation curve 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 | 24 | 15 | 9 |
| Feb | 15 | 41 | 22 | 19 |
| Mar | 21 | 77 | 52 | 25 |
| Apr | 12 | 111 | 44 | 67 |
| May | 17 | 129 | 71 | 58 |
| Jun | 21 | 130 | 91 | 39 |
| Jul | 11 | 130 | 46 | 84 |
| Aug | 0 | 111 | 0 | 111 |
| Sep | 20 | 86 | 57 | 29 |
| Oct | 17 | 53 | 29 | 24 |
| Nov | 21 | 31 | 22 | 9 |
| Dec | 15 | 18 | 9 | 9 |
| Year | 190 | 941 | 458 | 483 |
The school estate in Teignbridge
Teignbridge has 57 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register teaching 15,287 pupils between them. Source: DfE Get Information About Schools.
The split is 47 primary, 8 secondary and 2 special, at an average of 268 pupils a site. That is 5.9 primaries for every secondary, which is the ratio that matters for a roof: a primary of a few hundred pupils usually offers a hall roof and one teaching block, while a secondary site carries a sports hall, a dining block and several flat roofs.
If your trust holds several of them, the sequencing question comes before the sizing question. Roof age, covering type and the state of the incoming supply vary block by block across an estate, and that is normally what sets the order of works.
Grid connection through National Grid Electricity Distribution
National Grid Electricity Distribution operates the distribution network across Devon, 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 Devon the planning database records 248 solar schemes totalling 1451 MW, of which 90 are operational (REPD Q1 2026).
Send us the school postcode
Lenzie Consulting Ltd arranges roof surveys for schools across Devon. 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 Newton Abbot trusts ask before a survey
- What would a 260 kWp array produce at a Newton Abbot school?
- Yes, and the figure matters more than the sunshine. 943 kWh per kWp a year puts a 260 kWp array at around 245,200 kWh, on roughly 772 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 Newton Abbot?
- Less is wasted than governors expect, but the figure is worth seeing: 25.6 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 National Grid Electricity Distribution.
- Who do we apply to for export near Newton Abbot?
- Only National Grid Electricity Distribution 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 Teignbridge?
- 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 Teignbridge. We confirm it either way.
- How many schools are there around Newton Abbot?
- Teignbridge has 57 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register, with 15,287 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.