What would a 280 kWp array produce at a Brentwood school?

Yes, and the figure matters more than the sunshine. 913 kWh per kWp a year puts a 280 kWp array at around 255,600 kWh, on roughly 832 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 Brentwood?

Less is wasted than governors expect, but the figure is worth seeing: 25.6 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 UK Power Networks.

Who do we apply to for export near Brentwood?

Only UK Power 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 Brentwood?

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 Brentwood. We confirm it either way.

How many schools are there around Brentwood?

Brentwood has 31 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register, with 14,589 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 Brentwood

A school roof in Brentwood 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.

255,600 kWh a year, modelled for a 280 kWp array on roughly 832 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 Brentwood

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

Drawing Illustrative estate, not a Brentwood school

Blocks 4, 3 with array

Array about 345 kWp

Yield about 315,000 kWh/yr

Frontage about 90 m / Rev A / CM14

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.

Brentwood / Essex

A school on the edge of an eastern commuter town, solar arrays on its roofs and wooded low hills beyond — School buildings of the kind we survey across East of England. Not a named school and not our work.

School rooftop solar across Essex

A one kilowatt-peak array on a shallow pitched roof in Brentwood models at 913 kWh a year, from modelled irradiation of 1,173 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 3 percent above the mean across the towns we cover, so latitude is working slightly in your favour here.

Scaled up, a 280 kWp array, sized to what the nearest school scheme on record applied for, 14 miles away at Canvey Island, models at about 255,600 kWh a year before shading, and needs roughly 832 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 65,400 kWh landing in July and August and roughly 13,000 kWh across December and January. UK Power 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 Brentwood against the rest of Essex

Colchester953
Canvey Island945
Southend-on-Sea942
Basildon933
Braintree932
Chelmsford930
Grays927
Brentwood913
Harlow908

Brentwood ranks 9 of 10 towns we cover in Essex on modelled yield, against a national mean of 886 kWh per kWp. The county runs from 908 to 973, a spread of 65 kWh per kWp. On a 500 kWp array that is about 32,500 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

What the planning record shows around Brentwood

The Renewable Energy Planning Database holds no school scheme for the CM14 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 14 miles from Brentwood, at Canvey Island: 280 kWp at Castle View School, Foksville Road, applicant Castle View School, which holds consent and is awaiting construction. That is someone else's application, not ours, and it is here because it shows what Essex planning has already accepted at an education site. Source: Renewable Energy Planning Database, Q1 2026.

The summer holiday problem for a Brentwood school

25.6 percent of the annual output modelled for Brentwood 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 13.9 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 5.1 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 Brentwood as anywhere else.

And the week has the same hole in it. Two days in seven the site is closed altogether, at no cost to the generation, which is part of why the session day share sits where it does. Weekend lettings are the one lever a Brentwood school has over that, and they are worth counting properly.

The conclusion is not that a Brentwood 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 UK Power Networks to earn its keep.

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.

FIG. 2 A Brentwood 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 Brentwood, 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	25	16	9
Feb	15	39	21	18
Mar	21	74	50	24
Apr	12	106	42	64
May	17	121	66	55
Jun	21	126	88	38
Jul	11	127	45	82
Aug	0	107	0	107
Sep	20	84	56	28
Oct	17	52	29	23
Nov	21	31	22	9
Dec	15	22	11	11
Year	190	914	446	468

Per kWp installed, month by month, separating generation while the school is open from generation at a weekend or in the holidays. 73 percent of the Brentwood year sits between April and September, most of which is term time; it is the tail of that period, the last week of July and all of August, that the school is not there for. The daily split is a flat apportionment of each month, not a metered one. 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

How many schools Brentwood has

Brentwood has 31 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register teaching 14,589 pupils between them. Source: DfE Get Information About Schools.

The split is 23 primary, 6 secondary and 2 special, at an average of 471 pupils a site. That is 3.8 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 UK Power Networks

UK Power Networks is the network operator here, and their answer on export capacity shapes the design. Any commercial array above 3.68 kW per phase connects under G99 rather than G98, and the application fixes what you are allowed to push back onto the network. If the local network is tight, limiting export rarely breaks the case here: most of the generation is consumed on site while the building is working.

Across Essex the planning database records 221 solar schemes totalling 2787 MW, of which 46 are operational (REPD Q1 2026).

Book the survey

Start with the Brentwood 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 Brentwood schools

What would a 280 kWp array produce at a Brentwood school?: Yes, and the figure matters more than the sunshine. 913 kWh per kWp a year puts a 280 kWp array at around 255,600 kWh, on roughly 832 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 Brentwood?: Less is wasted than governors expect, but the figure is worth seeing: 25.6 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 UK Power Networks.
Who do we apply to for export near Brentwood?: Only UK Power 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 Brentwood?: 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 Brentwood. We confirm it either way.
How many schools are there around Brentwood?: Brentwood has 31 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register, with 14,589 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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