Specialist solar panels for schools in Poole
Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks runs the network around Poole, and on a school site their answer on export shapes the design as much as the roof pitch does. We look at the roof, the switchboard and the timetable in that order, then set the array size against what the site draws in term time.
965 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 569,400 kWh. Source: EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss.
Book a roof survey in Poole- 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.
School rooftop solar across Dorset
A one kilowatt-peak array on a shallow pitched roof in Poole models at 965 kWh a year, from modelled irradiation of 1,232 kWh per square metre in the plane of the array (EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss). At 9 percent above our mean, Poole is at the strong end of the range, and a roof here earns more for every square metre than the same roof would further north.
Scaled up, a 590 kWp array, sized to what the nearest school scheme on record applied for, 21 miles away at Dorchester, models at about 569,400 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 145,800 kWh landing in July and August and roughly 29,600 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.
Poole ranks 6 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.
What the planning record shows around Poole
Search the Renewable Energy Planning Database for the BH14 postcode district and nothing comes back under education. That is worth stating plainly and then setting aside: the register is built around generating stations, a school array is a fraction of the size it captures reliably, and plenty of school roofs never appear in any national record at all.
The nearest education scheme on the record is 21 miles from Poole, at Dorchester: 190 kWp at Damers First School, applicant Solar Options for Schools Limited, which holds consent and is awaiting construction. That is someone else's application, not ours, and it is here because it shows what Dorset planning has already accepted at an education site. Source: Renewable Energy Planning Database, Q1 2026.
The summer holiday problem for a Poole school
25.6 percent of the annual output modelled for Poole arrives in the two months a school uses least (EU PVGIS v5.2). Term ends in the third week of July and the buildings stay largely empty until September. July is the single strongest month here at 14 percent of the annual total, and it falls almost entirely inside the holiday.
The inverse holds at the other end. December and January together return only 5.2 percent of the year, and those are the months with the heating, the lighting and the full timetable all running at once. The roof makes 5.9 times as much in July as it does in December, and August alone outproduces December by about 4.9 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.
Across the country the arithmetic settles at roughly 49 percent of output on a session day, against about 71 percent for a weekday business. That figure hardly varies by location, which is why the local numbers that matter here are the yield, the roofs and what has already cleared planning nearby.
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.
That argues for a particular shape of scheme rather than against one. Size to the load that does not stop at the end of term, count in lettings, holiday clubs and summer works honestly rather than optimistically, and then decide whether storage or an export arrangement with Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks pays for the surplus that is left.
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.
- 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 | 27 | 17 | 10 |
| Feb | 15 | 42 | 23 | 20 |
| Mar | 21 | 79 | 54 | 25 |
| Apr | 12 | 112 | 45 | 67 |
| May | 17 | 130 | 71 | 59 |
| Jun | 21 | 134 | 94 | 40 |
| Jul | 11 | 135 | 48 | 87 |
| Aug | 0 | 113 | 0 | 113 |
| Sep | 20 | 87 | 58 | 29 |
| Oct | 17 | 53 | 29 | 24 |
| Nov | 21 | 32 | 22 | 10 |
| Dec | 15 | 23 | 11 | 12 |
| Year | 190 | 967 | 472 | 495 |
Grid connection through Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks
Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks operates the distribution network across Dorset, 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 Dorset the planning database records 149 solar schemes totalling 1078 MW, of which 47 are operational (REPD Q1 2026).
How many schools Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole has
Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole has 96 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register teaching 51,798 pupils between them. Source: DfE Get Information About Schools.
The split is 66 primary, 24 secondary, 5 special and 1 further education, at an average of 540 pupils a site. 2.8 primaries per secondary is a mix weighted towards small sites. The roof area, and therefore most of the generation, sits with the 24 secondaries and the 1 further education site.
Across an estate of that size the roofs will not be in the same condition, and that is the point of surveying them together: the block with the best orientation is often not the block whose covering has twenty years left in it.
Start with the Poole roof
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.
Questions governors ask us about Poole schools
- How much would a school roof near Poole generate?
- Modelled at 965 kWh per kWp a year, a 590 kWp array on a Poole school models at about 569,400 kWh. What decides whether that is worth doing is how much of it the school uses itself, not the total. Source: EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss.
- How does the school year affect a solar scheme in Poole?
- It goes somewhere, just not into the timetable. 25.6 percent of the Poole generating year lands in July and August (EU PVGIS v5.2), and a closed school still runs servers, comms, refrigeration and ventilation. What that base load does not absorb is either stored, exported under an agreement with Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks, or a sign the array is too big. We test which before sizing anything.
- Which network operator handles the connection at a Poole school?
- Applications go to Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks, who run the network across Dorset. An export-limited offer usually still works for a school, because the summer surplus is the part you were least likely to be paid much for anyway.
- What does Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole require for solar on a school building?
- Roof-mounted solar on a non-domestic building often falls within permitted development under Part 14 of the General Permitted Development Order, subject to limits on how far the panels stand proud of the roof plane and, above a threshold, to prior approval from Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole on siting and design. Listed buildings and conservation areas are the usual exceptions. We put the position to Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole before a design is finalised.
- How many schools are there around Poole?
- Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole has 96 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register, with 51,798 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.