Specialist solar panels for schools in Sherborne
A school roof in Sherborne makes 5.8 times as much in July as it does in December, and the school year runs against that curve rather than with it. What we come back with is the usable roof area, the modelled output against your meter data, and the routes schools use to pay for it.
924 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 545,200 kWh. Source: EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss.
Book a roof survey in Sherborne- 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 Sherborne models at 924 kWh a year, from modelled irradiation of 1,182 kWh per square metre in the plane of the array (EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss). That is roughly 4 percent above the mean across the towns we cover, so latitude is working slightly in your favour here.
Scaled up, a 590 kWp array, sized to what the nearest school scheme on record applied for, 17 miles away at Dorchester, models at about 545,200 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 138,500 kWh landing in July and August and roughly 28,400 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.
Sherborne ranks 8 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 Sherborne
The Renewable Energy Planning Database holds no school scheme for the DT9 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 nearest education scheme on the record is 17 miles from Sherborne, 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 Sherborne school
25.4 percent of the annual output modelled for Sherborne 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 13.7 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 5.8 times as much in July as it does in December, and August alone outproduces December by about 4.9 to one. 73 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 Sherborne as anywhere else.
Inside the day it happens again. The roof is still at three quarters of its peak at four in the afternoon, by which time a Sherborne school is largely empty, so the hours that look best on a generation chart are the worst on a consumption one.
The conclusion is not that a Sherborne 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.
- 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 | 26 | 17 | 9 |
| Feb | 15 | 41 | 22 | 19 |
| Mar | 21 | 76 | 51 | 25 |
| Apr | 12 | 108 | 43 | 65 |
| May | 17 | 125 | 69 | 56 |
| Jun | 21 | 126 | 88 | 38 |
| Jul | 11 | 127 | 45 | 82 |
| Aug | 0 | 108 | 0 | 108 |
| Sep | 20 | 84 | 56 | 28 |
| Oct | 17 | 50 | 27 | 23 |
| Nov | 21 | 31 | 22 | 9 |
| Dec | 15 | 22 | 11 | 11 |
| Year | 190 | 924 | 451 | 473 |
How many schools Dorset has
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.
Grid connection through Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks
Connections around Sherborne 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).
Start with the Sherborne roof
A survey in Sherborne 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 Sherborne 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.
Questions governors ask us about Sherborne schools
- Is there enough sun around Sherborne for this to be worth doing?
- The model gives 924 kWh a year for every kWp installed at this latitude, so a 590 kWp array comes out at roughly 545,200 kWh a year before shading. It needs about 1,752 square metres of clear roof once walkways and rooflight setbacks are allowed for. Source: EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss.
- Does a Sherborne school waste its generation in August?
- 25.4 percent of the modelled annual output for Sherborne falls in July and August, when the buildings are closed for most of six weeks (EU PVGIS v5.2). It does not go to waste, but it only has three places to go: the base load that runs regardless, such as servers, catering refrigeration and ventilation; storage; or export under an agreement with Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks. We model all three against your half hourly data before an array is sized.
- Will the network around Sherborne accept the export?
- Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks is the distribution network operator for Dorset. Anything above 3.68 kW per phase connects under G99, and the application fixes the export limit. On a school site the incoming supply is often the binding constraint rather than the roof, so we ask that question before anyone sizes an array.
- Is planning permission needed for panels on a school in Sherborne?
- Usually permitted development covers a roof array on a school, with prior approval from Dorset needed above a capacity threshold. A ground mounted array in the grounds is a different question and much more likely to need a full application. We check both before design sign-off.
- How many schools are there around Sherborne?
- 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.