Solar panels for schools across Essex

The school estate in Essex

Essex has 530 open state-funded schools and colleges teaching 234,874 pupils, spread across 10 local authorities. Source: DfE Get Information About Schools.

Of those, 405 primary, 89 secondary, 29 special and 7 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.

Solar for education buildings and what a Essex roof models

Modelled yield is not flat across Essex. Clacton-on-Sea comes out at 973 kWh per kWp a year against 908 at Harlow, a spread of 65 kWh per kWp. On a 280 kWp school array that difference is about 18,200 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 Essex planning record

The Renewable Energy Planning Database records 1 school and college solar scheme in Essex, at Canvey Island. It is Castle View School, Foksville Road, applied for by Castle View School. The median array applied for is 280 kWp.

We were not involved in that scheme. It is a public planning record, and it is 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 UK Power 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.