Specialist solar panels for schools in Tower Hamlets
A kilowatt-peak on a Tower Hamlets school roof models at 976 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.
976 kWh per kWp a year at this latitude, so a 260 kWp array, the size applied for at the nearest school scheme on record, models at about 253,800 kWh. Source: EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss.
Book a roof survey in Tower Hamlets- 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 Tower Hamlets models at 976 kWh a year, from modelled irradiation of 1,247 kWh per square metre in the plane of the array (EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss). That is around 10 percent above the mean across the towns we cover, which is about as strong as a UK school roof gets.
Scaled up, a 260 kWp array, sized to what the nearest school scheme on record applied for, 0 miles away at Dover, models at about 253,800 kWh a year before shading, and needs roughly 772 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 66,200 kWh landing in July and August and roughly 12,200 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.
Tower Hamlets ranks 2 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 Tower Hamlets schools
There is no school entry for Tower Hamlets 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 Tower Hamlets.
The closest recorded one is about 0 miles away at Dover: Westmount Education Centre, a 260 kWp ground mounted array applied for by Blackap Limited, 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 Tower Hamlets falls as the roof peaks
The generating year and the school year are out of step in Tower Hamlets. July and August carry 26.1 percent of the modelled output (EU PVGIS v5.2), and the site is closed for most of those nine weeks. 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.
At the other end of the year the mismatch flips. Only 4.8 percent of output falls in December and January, the two months when a Tower Hamlets school is fully occupied and its heating and lighting are at their heaviest. The roof makes 6.3 times as much in June as it does in December, and August alone outproduces December by about 5.3 to one. 75 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 Tower Hamlets as anywhere else.
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.
The conclusion is not that a Tower Hamlets 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 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 | 40 | 21 | 19 |
| Mar | 21 | 77 | 52 | 25 |
| Apr | 12 | 115 | 46 | 69 |
| May | 17 | 130 | 71 | 59 |
| Jun | 21 | 138 | 97 | 41 |
| Jul | 11 | 138 | 49 | 89 |
| Aug | 0 | 116 | 0 | 116 |
| Sep | 20 | 90 | 60 | 30 |
| Oct | 17 | 54 | 30 | 24 |
| Nov | 21 | 30 | 21 | 9 |
| Dec | 15 | 22 | 11 | 11 |
| Year | 190 | 975 | 474 | 501 |
The school estate in Dover
Dover has 52 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register teaching 15,619 pupils between them. Source: DfE Get Information About Schools.
The split is 41 primary, 9 secondary and 2 special, at an average of 300 pupils a site. A ratio of 4.6 to one tells you where the roof area is. It is not with the 41 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.
Grid connection through UK Power Networks
Connections around Tower Hamlets 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
We survey school and college roofs throughout Greater London. We need the postcode, a rough roof area and your half hourly meter data if the trust has it. From that we model what the roof carries, what it generates against the timetable, and which of the funding routes actually suits a school of your size.
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 Tower Hamlets trusts ask before a survey
- Is there enough sun around Tower Hamlets for this to be worth doing?
- The model gives 976 kWh a year for every kWp installed at this latitude, so a 260 kWp array comes out at roughly 253,800 kWh a year before shading. It needs about 772 square metres of clear roof once walkways and rooflight setbacks are allowed for. Source: EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss.
- Does a Tower Hamlets school waste its generation in August?
- 26.1 percent of the modelled annual output for Tower Hamlets falls in July and August, when the buildings are closed for most of six weeks (EU PVGIS v5.2). It does not go to waste, but it only has three places to go: the base load that runs regardless, such as servers, catering refrigeration and ventilation; storage; or export under an agreement with UK Power Networks. We model all three against your half hourly data before an array is sized.
- Will the network around Tower Hamlets accept the export?
- UK Power Networks is the distribution network operator for Greater London. Anything above 3.68 kW per phase connects under G99, and the application fixes the export limit. On a school site the incoming supply is often the binding constraint rather than the roof, so we ask that question before anyone sizes an array.
- How many schools are there around Tower Hamlets?
- Dover has 52 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register, with 15,619 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.