How much would a school roof near Manchester generate?

Modelled at 788 kWh per kWp a year, a 160 kWp array on a Manchester school models at about 126,100 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 Manchester?

It goes somewhere, just not into the timetable. 25.4 percent of the Manchester 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 Manchester 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 Manchester 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 Manchester on siting and design. Listed buildings and conservation areas are the usual exceptions. We put the position to Manchester before a design is finalised.

Has a school near M12 already done this?

One school scheme is on record in this postcode district, including a 160 kWp array at Co Op Academy Belle Vue, Hyde Road that is with the planning authority. We were not involved in it. It is a public planning record, and it matters less as proof that solar works than as evidence of what this authority and this network operator have already accepted. Source: Renewable Energy Planning Database, Q1 2026.

How many schools are there around Manchester?

Manchester has 190 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register, with 90,079 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.

Specialist solar panels for schools in Manchester

A 160 kWp array at Co Op Academy Belle Vue, Hyde Road is the nearest school scheme on the planning record, and it is with the planning authority. 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.

25.4% of the modelled year lands in July and August, on a roof that returns 788 kWh per kWp a year. The worked example below runs at 160 kWp, the median size schools around Manchester have applied for. Source: EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss.

Book a roof survey in Manchester

1 teaching block
2 hall and kitchen
3 sports hall
4 1960s block, no array
first phase
later phase

Drawing Illustrative Greater Manchester estate

Blocks 4, 3 with array

Array about 345 kWp

Yield about 272,000 kWh/yr

Frontage about 90 m / Rev A / M12

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.

Manchester / Greater Manchester

A school on the edge of a Greater Manchester town, solar arrays on its roofs and low Pennine hills beyond — School buildings of the kind we survey across North West. Not a named school and not our work.

School solar consented near Manchester

The Renewable Energy Planning Database records 1 school and college solar scheme in the M12 postcode district. Co Op Academy Belle Vue, Hyde Road is down for a 160 kWp roof mounted array and the application is with the planning authority. The applicant on record is Co-op Academy Trust.

Those are other organisations' planning applications, not our projects. We list them because a scheme a few miles away tells you what this local authority and this network operator have already accepted for a building very like yours. Source: Renewable Energy Planning Database, Q1 2026.

The plan above the fold is a generic four block estate, drawn to make the scale and the phasing legible. Nobody should read it as Co Op Academy Belle Vue, Hyde Road or as any other Manchester site. Our knowledge of these applications comes entirely from the public record.

The median array applied for here is 160 kWp. At 160 kWp you are covering roughly 475 square metres of roof once walkways, edge zones and rooflight setbacks come out, which on most sites means a sports hall plus one teaching block rather than the whole estate.

Every one of them is a secondary school, which is worth knowing: a secondary site normally has a sports hall, a dining block and several flat roofs, which is where the usable area comes from.

Site on record	Applicant on record	Size	Mounting	Status
Co Op Academy Belle Vue, Hyde Road	Co-op Academy Trust	160 kWp	Roof	Application Submitted

Solar PV for academy trusts across Greater Manchester

A one kilowatt-peak array on a shallow pitched roof in Manchester models at 788 kWh a year, from modelled irradiation of 1,010 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 160 kWp array, sized to the median array applied for at schools around Manchester itself, models at about 126,100 kWh a year before shading, and needs roughly 475 square metres of clear roof. That size is not one we chose. It is what schools in this district have actually applied for.

Spread across the year that is about 32,000 kWh landing in July and August and roughly 5,300 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.

FIG. 1 Manchester against the rest of Greater Manchester

Wigan828
Altrincham816
Bolton801
Salford794
Manchester788
Bury788
Stockport785
Rochdale771
Oldham771

Manchester ranks 5 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.

Bars are zero based, so length is proportional to the figure. Where a county is flat, that is the finding: latitude is not the lever, the timetable is. Source: EU PVGIS v5.2, modelled per town

Why demand in Manchester falls as the roof peaks

The generating year and the school year are out of step in Manchester. 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. May 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 4.2 percent of output falls in December and January, the two months when a Manchester school is fully occupied and its heating and lighting are at their heaviest. The roof makes 7 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.

Summed over the year, about 49 percent of what a school roof makes arrives while the school is open. For a business trading every weekday the equivalent is roughly 71 percent. Nothing about Manchester changes that ratio much, but plenty about your own site changes what to do with it.

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.

A Manchester governing body should read that as a sizing constraint, not a reason to stop. The base load that runs through the holidays, servers, comms, refrigeration, ventilation and hot water, is the floor the array should be built up from, and everything above it has to be justified by storage, export or summer occupancy.

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.

FIG. 2 A Manchester roof against the English school year

generated while the school is open
generated at a weekend or in the holidays

The same figures as a table

Monthly output for a 1 kWp array in Manchester, split by whether the day is a school session day. Across the year 49 percent of generation lands while the school is open.
Month	Session days	Output, kWh per kWp	School open	School closed
Jan	20	17	11	6
Feb	15	33	18	15
Mar	21	66	45	21
Apr	12	95	38	57
May	17	112	61	51
Jun	21	110	77	33
Jul	11	108	38	70
Aug	0	92	0	92
Sep	20	71	47	24
Oct	17	43	24	19
Nov	21	25	18	8
Dec	15	16	8	8
Year	190	788	385	403

Each bar is one month's output per kWp, divided at the school gate. The May bar is 7 times the December one and the timetable runs the other way round. We apportion a month's generation evenly over its days, having no half hourly data for your meter. Session days follow a typical English school year of 190 days. Your own trust or authority may differ by a few days either way. Source: EU PVGIS v5.2, session days from a typical school calendar

The school estate in Manchester

Manchester has 190 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register teaching 90,079 pupils between them. Source: DfE Get Information About Schools.

The split is 139 primary, 32 secondary, 15 special and 4 further education, at an average of 474 pupils a site. A ratio of 4.3 to one tells you where the roof area is. It is not with the 139 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.

Aerial view of a school site with teaching blocks of several different ages, a sports hall and a playing field, solar arrays on two of the flat roofs — A school site with blocks of several ages, which is the usual starting point for a trust estate survey.

Grid connection through Electricity North West

Electricity North West is the network operator here, and their answer on export capacity shapes the design. Any commercial array above 3.68 kW per phase connects under G99 rather than G98, and the application fixes what you are allowed to push back onto the network. If the local network is tight, limiting export rarely breaks the case here: most of the generation is consumed on site while the building is working.

Across Greater Manchester the planning database records 118 solar schemes totalling 110 MW, of which 11 are operational (REPD Q1 2026).

Book the survey

Send us the school postcode

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.

What Manchester trusts ask before a survey

How much would a school roof near Manchester generate?: Modelled at 788 kWh per kWp a year, a 160 kWp array on a Manchester school models at about 126,100 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 Manchester?: It goes somewhere, just not into the timetable. 25.4 percent of the Manchester 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 Manchester 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 Manchester 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 Manchester on siting and design. Listed buildings and conservation areas are the usual exceptions. We put the position to Manchester before a design is finalised.
Has a school near M12 already done this?: One school scheme is on record in this postcode district, including a 160 kWp array at Co Op Academy Belle Vue, Hyde Road that is with the planning authority. We were not involved in it. It is a public planning record, and it matters less as proof that solar works than as evidence of what this authority and this network operator have already accepted. Source: Renewable Energy Planning Database, Q1 2026.
How many schools are there around Manchester?: Manchester has 190 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register, with 90,079 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.

Nearby

All Greater Manchester locations