What would a 260 kWp array produce at a Paignton school?

Yes, and the figure matters more than the sunshine. 961 kWh per kWp a year puts a 260 kWp array at around 249,900 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 Paignton?

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 Paignton?

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 Torbay?

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 Torbay. We confirm it either way.

Has a school near TQ4 already done this?

One school scheme is on record in this postcode district, including a 260 kWp array at South Devon College, Spots Hall that was withdrawn before determination. 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 Paignton?

Torbay has 43 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register, with 19,366 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 Paignton

A 260 kWp array at South Devon College, Spots Hall is the nearest school scheme on the planning record, and it was withdrawn before determination. 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.

249,900 kWh a year, modelled for a 260 kWp array on roughly 772 sqm of clear roof. That is the median size schools around Paignton have applied for. Source: EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss.

Book a roof survey in Paignton

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

Drawing Illustrative estate, not a Paignton school

Blocks 4, 3 with array

Array about 345 kWp

Yield about 332,000 kWh/yr

Frontage about 90 m / Rev A / TQ4

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.

Paignton / 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 Paignton

The Renewable Energy Planning Database records 1 school and college solar scheme in the TQ4 postcode district. South Devon College, Spots Hall is down for a 260 kWp roof mounted array and the application was withdrawn before determination. The applicant on record is South Devon College.

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 South Devon College, Spots Hall or as any other Paignton site. Our knowledge of these applications comes entirely from the public record.

The median array applied for here is 260 kWp. At 260 kWp you are covering roughly 772 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.

Every one of them is a college, which is worth knowing: a college runs longer days and more plant than a school, and it usually has the flat roof area to match.

Site on record	Applicant on record	Size	Mounting	Status
South Devon College, Spots Hall	South Devon College	260 kWp	Roof	Application Withdrawn

Solar PV for academy trusts across Devon

A one kilowatt-peak array on a shallow pitched roof in Paignton models at 961 kWh a year, from modelled irradiation of 1,221 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 8 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 the median array applied for at schools around Paignton itself, models at about 249,900 kWh a year before shading, and needs roughly 772 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 64,000 kWh landing in July and August and roughly 12,500 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 Paignton against the rest of Devon

Paignton961
Plymouth960
Newton Abbot943
Exeter938
Torquay937
Exmouth937
Barnstaple908
Tiverton903

Paignton ranks 1 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 Paignton falls as the roof peaks

The generating year and the school year are out of step in Paignton. 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 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 5 percent of output falls in December and January, the two months when a Paignton school is fully occupied and its heating and lighting are at their heaviest. The roof makes 6.1 times as much in June as it does in December, and August alone outproduces December by about 5.1 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 Paignton as anywhere else.

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

The conclusion is not that a Paignton 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 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 Paignton 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 Paignton, 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	26	17	9
Feb	15	40	21	19
Mar	21	77	52	25
Apr	12	112	45	67
May	17	132	72	60
Jun	21	134	94	40
Jul	11	133	47	86
Aug	0	113	0	113
Sep	20	87	58	29
Oct	17	53	29	24
Nov	21	31	22	9
Dec	15	22	11	11
Year	190	960	468	492

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 Paignton 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 Torbay

Torbay has 43 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register teaching 19,366 pupils between them. Source: DfE Get Information About Schools.

The split is 31 primary, 8 secondary, 3 special and 1 further education, at an average of 450 pupils a site. At 3.9 primaries to every secondary, most of the buildings here are small. That is not a reason to skip them, but it does mean the usable area on a primary is a hall roof and a teaching block rather than an estate.

For a trust with more than one site in Torbay, the first survey is worth running across the whole estate. It tells you which roofs are near the end of their covering life, which have the switchboard headroom, and therefore which one should carry the first array.

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

Connections around Paignton are handled by National Grid Electricity Distribution, which sets the export limit for the site. Above 3.68 kW per phase the connection runs under G99, so the export limit is agreed in advance rather than assumed. Where the local network is constrained, an export-limited connection usually still makes the scheme work, because a school uses most of what the roof makes during the working day.

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

A survey in Paignton starts with three things from you. Give us the postcode, the approximate roof area and, if you can get it from your supplier, twelve months of half hourly readings. What comes back is a usable area figure per block, output modelled against your own load rather than an average, and the ways a Paignton school can pay for it.

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 Paignton trusts ask before a survey

What would a 260 kWp array produce at a Paignton school?: Yes, and the figure matters more than the sunshine. 961 kWh per kWp a year puts a 260 kWp array at around 249,900 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 Paignton?: 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 Paignton?: 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 Torbay?: 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 Torbay. We confirm it either way.
Has a school near TQ4 already done this?: One school scheme is on record in this postcode district, including a 260 kWp array at South Devon College, Spots Hall that was withdrawn before determination. 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 Paignton?: Torbay has 43 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register, with 19,366 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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