Specialist solar panels for schools in Hillingdon
A kilowatt-peak on a Hillingdon school roof models at 904 kWh a year, above the mean across the towns we cover, and the roofs it applies to are mostly carrying nothing. The survey records sheet type, remaining life, purlin spacing and the state of the incoming supply, and the model runs off your own meter data rather than an average.
443,000 kWh a year, modelled for a 490 kWp array on roughly 1,455 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 Hillingdon- 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 Hillingdon models at 904 kWh a year, from modelled irradiation of 1,162 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 2 percent above the mean across the towns we cover, so latitude is working slightly in your favour here.
Scaled up, a 490 kWp array, sized to what the nearest school scheme on record applied for, 10 miles away at Windsor, models at about 443,000 kWh a year before shading, and needs roughly 1,455 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 112,500 kWh landing in July and August and roughly 23,500 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.
Hillingdon ranks 22 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 Hillingdon schools
Hillingdon 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 Hillingdon.
The closest recorded one is about 10 miles away at Windsor: St Johns Beaumont School, Priest Hill, a 260 kWp roof mounted array applied for by St Johns Beaumont School, which was refused. We were not involved in it. We cite it because it is a public record of what has cleared planning in this part of Berkshire. Source: Renewable Energy Planning Database, Q1 2026.
Why demand in Hillingdon falls as the roof peaks
The generating year and the school year are out of step in Hillingdon. July and August carry 25.4 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 13.8 percent of the annual total, and it falls almost entirely inside the holiday.
At the other end of the year the mismatch flips. Only 5.3 percent of output falls in December and January, the two months when a Hillingdon school is fully occupied and its heating and lighting are at their heaviest. The roof makes 5.7 times as much in July as it does in December, and August alone outproduces December by about 4.8 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 Hillingdon 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 Hillingdon 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 Hillingdon 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.
- 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 | 39 | 21 | 18 |
| Mar | 21 | 73 | 49 | 24 |
| Apr | 12 | 105 | 42 | 63 |
| May | 17 | 120 | 66 | 54 |
| Jun | 21 | 124 | 87 | 37 |
| Jul | 11 | 125 | 44 | 81 |
| Aug | 0 | 105 | 0 | 105 |
| Sep | 20 | 83 | 55 | 28 |
| Oct | 17 | 52 | 29 | 23 |
| Nov | 21 | 31 | 22 | 9 |
| Dec | 15 | 22 | 11 | 11 |
| Year | 190 | 905 | 443 | 462 |
The school estate in Hillingdon
Hillingdon has 96 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register teaching 50,482 pupils between them. Source: DfE Get Information About Schools.
The split is 65 primary, 22 secondary, 8 special and 1 further education, at an average of 526 pupils a site. At 3 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 Hillingdon, 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.
Grid connection through UK Power Networks
Connections around Hillingdon 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.
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 Hillingdon trusts ask before a survey
- How much would a school roof near Hillingdon generate?
- Modelled at 904 kWh per kWp a year, a 490 kWp array on a Hillingdon school models at about 443,000 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 Hillingdon?
- It goes somewhere, just not into the timetable. 25.4 percent of the Hillingdon 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 Hillingdon 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 Hillingdon?
- Hillingdon has 96 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register, with 50,482 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.