Specialist solar panels for schools in Bury
A school roof in Bury makes 7.1 times as much in May 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.
788 kWh per kWp a year at this latitude, so a 220 kWp array, the size applied for at the nearest school scheme on record, models at about 173,400 kWh. Source: EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss.
Book a roof survey in Bury- 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 Manchester
A one kilowatt-peak array on a shallow pitched roof in Bury models at 788 kWh a year, from modelled irradiation of 1,009 kWh per square metre in the plane of the array (EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss). That is about 11 percent below the mean across the towns we cover, so the case at this latitude rests almost entirely on using the output on site rather than exporting it.
Scaled up, a 220 kWp array, sized to what the nearest school scheme on record applied for, 7 miles away at Salford, models at about 173,400 kWh a year before shading, and needs roughly 653 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 44,200 kWh landing in July and August and roughly 7,300 kWh across December and January. Electricity North West 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.
Bury ranks 6 of 10 towns we cover in Greater Manchester on modelled yield, against a national mean of 886 kWh per kWp. The county runs from 769 to 828, a spread of 59 kWh per kWp. On a 500 kWp array that is about 29,500 kWh a year between the strongest and weakest town in the county.
What the planning record shows around Bury
Search the Renewable Energy Planning Database for the BL9 postcode district and nothing comes back under education. That is worth stating plainly and then setting aside: the register is built around generating stations, a school array is a fraction of the size it captures reliably, and plenty of school roofs never appear in any national record at all.
The nearest education scheme on the record is 7 miles from Bury, at Salford: 220 kWp at The Albion Academy, London Street, applicant Barker Associates Llp, which holds consent and is awaiting construction. That is someone else's application, not ours, and it is here because it shows what Greater Manchester planning has already accepted at an education site. Source: Renewable Energy Planning Database, Q1 2026.
The summer holiday problem for a Bury school
25.5 percent of the annual output modelled for Bury 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. May is the strongest single month here at 14.4 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 4.2 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 7.1 times as much in May as it does in December, and August alone outproduces December by about 5.8 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 Bury 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 Bury school has over that, and they are worth counting properly.
The conclusion is not that a Bury 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 Electricity North West 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 | 17 | 11 | 6 |
| Feb | 15 | 33 | 18 | 15 |
| Mar | 21 | 65 | 44 | 21 |
| Apr | 12 | 95 | 38 | 57 |
| May | 17 | 113 | 62 | 51 |
| Jun | 21 | 110 | 77 | 33 |
| Jul | 11 | 109 | 39 | 70 |
| Aug | 0 | 92 | 0 | 92 |
| Sep | 20 | 70 | 47 | 23 |
| Oct | 17 | 43 | 24 | 19 |
| Nov | 21 | 24 | 17 | 7 |
| Dec | 15 | 16 | 8 | 8 |
| Year | 190 | 787 | 385 | 402 |
How many schools Bury has
Bury has 85 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register teaching 26,276 pupils between them. Source: DfE Get Information About Schools.
The split is 65 primary, 14 secondary, 4 special and 2 further education, at an average of 309 pupils a site. 4.6 primaries per secondary is a mix weighted towards small sites. The roof area, and therefore most of the generation, sits with the 14 secondaries and the 2 further education sites.
Across an estate of that size the roofs will not be in the same condition, and that is the point of surveying them together: the block with the best orientation is often not the block whose covering has twenty years left in it.
Grid connection through Electricity North West
Connections around Bury are handled by Electricity North West, 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.
Across Greater Manchester the planning database records 118 solar schemes totalling 110 MW, of which 11 are operational (REPD Q1 2026).
Start with the Bury roof
Lenzie Consulting Ltd arranges roof surveys for schools across Greater Manchester. 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.
Questions governors ask us about Bury schools
- How much would a school roof near Bury generate?
- Modelled at 788 kWh per kWp a year, a 220 kWp array on a Bury school models at about 173,400 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 Bury?
- It goes somewhere, just not into the timetable. 25.5 percent of the Bury 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 Electricity North West, or a sign the array is too big. We test which before sizing anything.
- Which network operator handles the connection at a Bury school?
- Applications go to Electricity North West, who run the network across Greater Manchester. 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.
- What does Bury require for solar on a school building?
- Roof-mounted solar on a non-domestic building often falls within permitted development under Part 14 of the General Permitted Development Order, subject to limits on how far the panels stand proud of the roof plane and, above a threshold, to prior approval from Bury on siting and design. Listed buildings and conservation areas are the usual exceptions. We put the position to Bury before a design is finalised.
- How many schools are there around Bury?
- Bury has 85 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register, with 26,276 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.