Specialist solar panels for schools in Bexley
25.8 percent of what a Bexley school roof makes arrives in July and August, which is when the buildings are shut. A survey here starts with the covering and the structure, then the incoming supply, then what the timetable actually draws.
916 kWh per kWp a year at this latitude, so a 360 kWp array, the size applied for at the nearest school scheme on record, models at about 329,800 kWh. Source: EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss.
Book a roof survey in Bexley- 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 PV for academy trusts across Greater London
A one kilowatt-peak array on a shallow pitched roof in Bexley models at 916 kWh a year, from modelled irradiation of 1,177 kWh per square metre in the plane of the array (EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss). Bexley models 3 percent above our mean. That is a real advantage, though a smaller one than the difference between an array matched to the timetable and one matched to the roof.
Scaled up, a 360 kWp array, sized to what the nearest school scheme on record applied for, 11 miles away at Sevenoaks, models at about 329,800 kWh a year before shading, and needs roughly 1,069 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 85,100 kWh landing in July and August and roughly 16,800 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.
Bexley ranks 3 of 50 towns we cover in Greater London on modelled yield, against a national mean of 886 kWh per kWp. The county runs from 847 to 987, a spread of 140 kWh per kWp. On a 500 kWp array that is about 70,000 kWh a year between the strongest and weakest town in the county.
The planning position for Bexley schools
There is no school entry for Bexley and the area around it in the Renewable Energy Planning Database. The register is dependable for anything from a megawatt upward and incomplete below it, and a school array is usually nearer a fifth of a megawatt, so this says more about the threshold than about Bexley.
The closest recorded one is about 11 miles away at Sevenoaks: The Sennocke Centre, High Street, a 360 kWp roof mounted array applied for by Sevenoaks School, which holds consent and is awaiting construction. We were not involved in it. We cite it because it is a public record of what has cleared planning in this part of Kent. Source: Renewable Energy Planning Database, Q1 2026.
Why demand in Bexley falls as the roof peaks
The generating year and the school year are out of step in Bexley. July and August carry 25.8 percent of the modelled output (EU PVGIS v5.2), and the site is closed for most of those nine weeks. July is the single strongest month here at 14 percent of the annual total, and it falls almost entirely inside the holiday.
At the other end of the year the mismatch flips. Only 5.1 percent of output falls in December and January, the two months when a Bexley school is fully occupied and its heating and lighting are at their heaviest. The roof makes 5.8 times as much in July as it does in December, and August alone outproduces December by about 5 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 weekly pattern repeats the annual one. Saturdays and Sundays generate as well as any other day and consume almost nothing, so before storage or export is even discussed it is worth knowing what the site does at a weekend, which only half hourly data will tell you.
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 UK Power 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 | 25 | 16 | 9 |
| Feb | 15 | 38 | 20 | 18 |
| Mar | 21 | 73 | 49 | 24 |
| Apr | 12 | 106 | 42 | 64 |
| May | 17 | 122 | 67 | 55 |
| Jun | 21 | 127 | 89 | 38 |
| Jul | 11 | 128 | 45 | 83 |
| Aug | 0 | 109 | 0 | 109 |
| Sep | 20 | 84 | 56 | 28 |
| Oct | 17 | 52 | 29 | 23 |
| Nov | 21 | 31 | 22 | 9 |
| Dec | 15 | 22 | 11 | 11 |
| Year | 190 | 917 | 446 | 471 |
Grid connection through UK Power Networks
Connections around Bexley are handled by UK Power 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.
The school estate in Bexley
Bexley has 83 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register teaching 41,880 pupils between them. Source: DfE Get Information About Schools.
The split is 60 primary, 16 secondary and 7 special, at an average of 505 pupils a site. A ratio of 3.8 to one tells you where the roof area is. It is not with the 60 primaries, which mostly offer a hall and a teaching block each, but with the larger sites that were built with a sports hall and a dining block attached.
Where a multi-academy trust holds several of those sites, surveying the estate in one pass beats taking a roof at a time. The design work, the connection applications and the procurement paperwork are the same job repeated, and a trust that runs them together gets a better answer on all three.
Send us the school postcode
Lenzie Consulting Ltd arranges roof surveys for schools across Greater London. Send the school postcode and a rough idea of the roof area, and the last twelve months of half hourly meter data if the school holds it. We come back with what the roofs can carry, what they would generate against your own consumption, and the funding routes open to a school.
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.
What Bexley trusts ask before a survey
- How much would a school roof near Bexley generate?
- Modelled at 916 kWh per kWp a year, a 360 kWp array on a Bexley school models at about 329,800 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 Bexley?
- It goes somewhere, just not into the timetable. 25.8 percent of the Bexley 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 UK Power Networks, or a sign the array is too big. We test which before sizing anything.
- Which network operator handles the connection at a Bexley school?
- Applications go to UK Power Networks, who run the network across Greater London. 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.
- How many schools are there around Bexley?
- Bexley has 83 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register, with 41,880 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.