Specialist solar panels for schools in Kingston
UK Power Networks runs the network around Kingston, and on a school site their answer on export shapes the design as much as the roof pitch does. We look at the roof, the switchboard and the timetable in that order, then set the array size against what the site draws in term time.
25.7% of the modelled year lands in July and August, on a roof that returns 987 kWh per kWp a year. The worked example below runs at 350 kWp, 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 Kingston- 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.
School rooftop solar across Greater London
A one kilowatt-peak array on a shallow pitched roof in Kingston models at 987 kWh a year, from modelled irradiation of 1,265 kWh per square metre in the plane of the array (EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss). At 11 percent above our mean, Kingston 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 350 kWp array, sized to what the nearest school scheme on record applied for, 13 miles away at Chichester, models at about 345,500 kWh a year before shading, and needs roughly 1,040 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 88,800 kWh landing in July and August and roughly 17,300 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.
Kingston ranks 1 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.
What the planning record shows around Kingston
The Renewable Energy Planning Database holds no school scheme for Kingston and the area around it. 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 13 miles from Kingston, at Chichester: 350 kWp at Chichester College, Westgate Fields, applicant Green Nation Solar Energy, which holds consent and is awaiting construction. That is someone else's application, not ours, and it is here because it shows what Sussex planning has already accepted at an education site. Source: Renewable Energy Planning Database, Q1 2026.
The summer holiday problem for a Kingston school
25.7 percent of the annual output modelled for Kingston 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. June is the strongest single month here at 14.2 percent of the annual total, which is still term time, and that works slightly in your favour against towns whose curve peaks in July.
The inverse holds at the other end. December and January together return only 5 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 6.1 times as much in June 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.
Put the two calendars together and roughly 49 percent of a school's generation nationally lands on a session day, against about 71 percent for a business open every weekday. That gap is the whole difference between appraising a school roof and appraising any other commercial one, and it barely moves from town to town.
Daily shape compounds it. A school's load climbs from breakfast club, holds through the teaching day and falls away from about three in the afternoon, while generation is still strong until six in high summer. That is why we size against half hourly meter data rather than against annual consumption: the annual figure hides both problems.
None of that makes a Kingston scheme a bad one. It changes what the scheme should be: sized against the base load that runs whether or not the school is open, which on most sites is servers, comms, catering refrigeration, ventilation and hot water, with lettings, holiday clubs and summer works added on top. Where that base load is thin, the choices are storage, an export arrangement through UK Power Networks, or a smaller array that consumes nearly everything it makes.
We set out the full treatment of the school year against 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 | 80 | 54 | 26 |
| Apr | 12 | 115 | 46 | 69 |
| May | 17 | 132 | 72 | 60 |
| Jun | 21 | 140 | 98 | 42 |
| Jul | 11 | 139 | 49 | 90 |
| Aug | 0 | 114 | 0 | 114 |
| Sep | 20 | 88 | 59 | 29 |
| Oct | 17 | 54 | 30 | 24 |
| Nov | 21 | 32 | 22 | 10 |
| Dec | 15 | 23 | 11 | 12 |
| Year | 190 | 985 | 481 | 504 |
Grid connection through UK Power Networks
UK Power Networks operates the distribution network across Greater London, so the export application goes to them. Anything larger than 3.68 kW per phase falls under G99, which means an application before commissioning rather than a notification afterwards. A constrained network is not the end of a scheme. Capping export costs little when the building already absorbs most of what the roof produces.
How many schools Portsmouth has
Portsmouth has 62 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register teaching 27,696 pupils between them. Source: DfE Get Information About Schools.
The split is 45 primary, 11 secondary, 5 special and 1 further education, at an average of 447 pupils a site. That is 4.1 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.
Start with the Kingston roof
The first survey answers three questions at once: what the roofs carry, what they generate against your own timetable, and how a Kingston school pays for it. Send the postcode, an approximate roof area per block and half hourly meter data if the school can get it from its supplier.
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 Kingston schools
- What would a 350 kWp array produce at a Kingston school?
- Yes, and the figure matters more than the sunshine. 987 kWh per kWp a year puts a 350 kWp array at around 345,500 kWh, on roughly 1,040 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 Kingston?
- Less is wasted than governors expect, but the figure is worth seeing: 25.7 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 Kingston?
- 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.
- How many schools are there around Kingston?
- Portsmouth has 62 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register, with 27,696 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.