Solar panels for schools across Dorset

The school estate in Dorset

Dorset has 251 open state-funded schools and colleges teaching 96,326 pupils, spread across 2 local authorities. Source: DfE Get Information About Schools.

Of those, 185 primary, 53 secondary, 11 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 Dorset roof models

Modelled yield is not flat across Dorset. Weymouth comes out at 1,006 kWh per kWp a year against 924 at Sherborne, a spread of 82 kWh per kWp. On a 390 kWp school array that difference is about 31,980 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 Dorset planning record

The Renewable Energy Planning Database records 2 school and college solar schemes in Dorset, all of them at Dorchester. They include Damers First School at Dorchester. The median array applied for is 390 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 Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks. 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.