What would a 590 kWp array produce at a Bridport school?

Yes, and the figure matters more than the sunshine. 971 kWh per kWp a year puts a 590 kWp array at around 572,900 kWh, on roughly 1,752 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 Bridport?

Less is wasted than governors expect, but the figure is worth seeing: 25.8 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 Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks.

Who do we apply to for export near Bridport?

Only Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks 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 Dorset?

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 Dorset. We confirm it either way.

How many schools are there around Bridport?

Dorset has 155 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register, with 44,528 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 Bridport

A kilowatt-peak on a Bridport school roof models at 971 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.

971 kWh per kWp a year at this latitude, so a 590 kWp array, the size applied for at the nearest school scheme on record, models at about 572,900 kWh. Source: EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss.

Book a roof survey in Bridport

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

Drawing Typical school site, Bridport scale

Blocks 4, 3 with array

Array about 345 kWp

Yield about 335,000 kWh/yr

Frontage about 90 m / Rev A / DT6

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.

Bridport / Dorset

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.

Solar PV for academy trusts across Dorset

A one kilowatt-peak array on a shallow pitched roof in Bridport models at 971 kWh a year, from modelled irradiation of 1,243 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 10 percent above the mean across the towns we cover, which is about as strong as a UK school roof gets.

Scaled up, a 590 kWp array, sized to what the nearest school scheme on record applied for, 14 miles away at Dorchester, models at about 572,900 kWh a year before shading, and needs roughly 1,752 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 147,800 kWh landing in July and August and roughly 28,100 kWh across December and January. Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks 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 Bridport against the rest of Dorset

Weymouth1006
Dorchester985
Christchurch981
Bournemouth971
Bridport971
Poole965
Wimborne964
Sherborne924

Bridport ranks 5 of 8 towns we cover in Dorset on modelled yield, against a national mean of 886 kWh per kWp. The county runs from 924 to 1006, a spread of 82 kWh per kWp. On a 500 kWp array that is about 41,000 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

The planning position for Bridport schools

The Renewable Energy Planning Database holds no school scheme for the DT6 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 14 miles away at Dorchester: Damers First School, a 190 kWp roof mounted array applied for by Solar Options for Schools Limited, which holds consent and is awaiting construction. We were not involved in it. We cite it because it is a public record of what has cleared planning in this part of Dorset. Source: Renewable Energy Planning Database, Q1 2026.

Why demand in Bridport falls as the roof peaks

The generating year and the school year are out of step in Bridport. July and August carry 25.8 percent of the modelled output (EU PVGIS v5.2), and the site is closed for most of those nine weeks. July is the single strongest month here at 14 percent of the annual total, and it falls almost entirely inside the holiday.

At the other end of the year the mismatch flips. Only 4.9 percent of output falls in December and January, the two months when a Bridport school is fully occupied and its heating and lighting are at their heaviest. The roof makes 6.2 times as much in July 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.

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 Bridport as anywhere else.

The same mismatch repeats every day. Peak generation lands between eleven and three, the timetable ends shortly after, and by four the site is down to caretaking and cleaning. An annual consumption figure cannot show that, which is why we ask for the half hourly data instead.

The conclusion is not that a Bridport 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 Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks to earn its keep.

We set out the complete version of the term time arithmetic on the home page, and what it does to a payback figure under costs.

FIG. 2 A Bridport 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 Bridport, 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	41	22	19
Mar	21	79	54	25
Apr	12	113	45	68
May	17	132	72	60
Jun	21	134	94	40
Jul	11	136	48	88
Aug	0	115	0	115
Sep	20	89	59	30
Oct	17	53	29	24
Nov	21	31	22	9
Dec	15	22	11	11
Year	190	971	473	498

Output per kWp installed, split by whether the day is a session day. July and August are 25.8 percent of the Bridport year and the school is shut for most of them. Each month's total is spread evenly across its days, which is the only split available without half hourly readings. 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 Dorset

Dorset has 155 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register teaching 44,528 pupils between them. Source: DfE Get Information About Schools.

The split is 119 primary, 29 secondary, 6 special and 1 further education, at an average of 287 pupils a site. That is 4.1 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.

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 Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks

Connections around Bridport are handled by Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks, 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 Dorset the planning database records 149 solar schemes totalling 1078 MW, of which 47 are operational (REPD Q1 2026).

Book the survey

Send us the school postcode

We survey school and college roofs throughout Dorset. We need the postcode, a rough roof area and your half hourly meter data if the trust has it. From that we model what the roof carries, what it generates against the timetable, and which of the funding routes actually suits a school of your size.

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 Bridport trusts ask before a survey

What would a 590 kWp array produce at a Bridport school?: Yes, and the figure matters more than the sunshine. 971 kWh per kWp a year puts a 590 kWp array at around 572,900 kWh, on roughly 1,752 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 Bridport?: Less is wasted than governors expect, but the figure is worth seeing: 25.8 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 Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks.
Who do we apply to for export near Bridport?: Only Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks 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 Dorset?: 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 Dorset. We confirm it either way.
How many schools are there around Bridport?: Dorset has 155 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register, with 44,528 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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