Specialist solar panels for schools in Wimborne
Dorset has 155 state-funded schools and colleges, and most of them are buying electricity in exactly the hours their own roofs could be making it. We start with the roof build up and the age of the covering, because across a school estate that is usually what decides which block goes first.
568,800 kWh a year, modelled for a 590 kWp array on roughly 1,752 sqm of clear roof. That is the size applied for at the nearest school scheme on record. Source: EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss.
Book a roof survey in Wimborne- 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.
Solar for education buildings across Dorset
A one kilowatt-peak array on a shallow pitched roof in Wimborne models at 964 kWh a year, from modelled irradiation of 1,231 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, Wimborne 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 568,800 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 145,600 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.
Wimborne ranks 7 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.
School solar on record near Wimborne
Wimborne and the area around it has no education solar entry in the Renewable Energy Planning Database. Almost no school array is large enough to be captured there reliably, so the absence tells you about the reporting threshold and very little about what is already on the roofs around Wimborne.
Look 21 miles out and there is one: Damers First School in Dorchester, 190 kWp, applied for by Solar Options for Schools Limited, which holds consent and is awaiting construction. None of our doing. It is a public planning record, and the nearest evidence available of how an application like yours is treated around here. Source: Renewable Energy Planning Database, Q1 2026.
Term dates against the Wimborne generation curve
A Wimborne school roof generates most in the weeks its buildings are closed. 25.6 percent of the modelled year lands in July and August alone (EU PVGIS v5.2), and the summer holiday takes roughly six of those nine weeks out of the timetable. July is the single strongest month here at 14 percent of the annual total, and it falls almost entirely inside the holiday.
Winter reverses it. December and January between them return 5 percent of the modelled year, and that is when the heating, the lighting and a full register are all drawing at the same time. The roof makes 6.1 times as much in July 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.
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 whole argument about term dates and the generation curve 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 | 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 | 112 | 0 | 112 |
| Sep | 20 | 87 | 58 | 29 |
| Oct | 17 | 53 | 29 | 24 |
| Nov | 21 | 32 | 22 | 10 |
| Dec | 15 | 22 | 11 | 11 |
| Year | 190 | 964 | 472 | 492 |
Grid connection through Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks
Connections around Wimborne 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).
Dorset schools, phase by phase
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. At 4.1 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 Dorset, 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.
Book a roof survey at your Wimborne school
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.
Wimborne school solar, answered
- Is there enough sun around Wimborne for this to be worth doing?
- The model gives 964 kWh a year for every kWp installed at this latitude, so a 590 kWp array comes out at roughly 568,800 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 Wimborne school waste its generation in August?
- 25.6 percent of the modelled annual output for Wimborne 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 Wimborne 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.
- How many schools are there around Wimborne?
- 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.