How much would a school roof near Salford generate?

Modelled at 794 kWh per kWp a year, a 220 kWp array on a Salford school models at about 174,700 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 Salford?

It goes somewhere, just not into the timetable. 25.5 percent of the Salford 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 Salford 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 Salford 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 Salford on siting and design. Listed buildings and conservation areas are the usual exceptions. We put the position to Salford before a design is finalised.

Has a school near M6 already done this?

One school scheme is on record in this postcode district, including a 220 kWp array at The Albion Academy, London Street that holds consent and is awaiting construction. 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 Salford?

Salford has 98 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register, with 37,685 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 Salford

The Albion Academy, London Street sits on the planning record near Salford at 220 kWp, which makes the question here less whether a school roof works and more what yours would carry. A survey here starts with the covering and the structure, then the incoming supply, then what the timetable actually draws.

25.5% of the modelled year lands in July and August, on a roof that returns 794 kWh per kWp a year. The worked example below runs at 220 kWp, the median size schools around Salford have applied for. Source: EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss.

Book a roof survey in Salford

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 274,000 kWh/yr

Frontage about 90 m / Rev A / M6

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.

Salford / 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 Salford

The Renewable Energy Planning Database records 1 school and college solar scheme in the M6 postcode district. The Albion Academy, London Street is down for a 220 kWp roof mounted array and the application holds consent and is awaiting construction. The applicant on record is Barker Associates Llp.

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 The Albion Academy, London Street or as any other Salford site. Our knowledge of these applications comes entirely from the public record.

The median array applied for here is 220 kWp. At 220 kWp you are covering roughly 653 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
The Albion Academy, London Street	Barker Associates Llp	220 kWp	Roof	Awaiting Construction

Solar PV for academy trusts across Greater Manchester

A one kilowatt-peak array on a shallow pitched roof in Salford models at 794 kWh a year, from modelled irradiation of 1,017 kWh per square metre in the plane of the array (EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss). 10 percent below our mean puts Salford at the weaker end of the range, which raises the premium on self consumption and lowers the value of anything that leaves the site.

Scaled up, a 220 kWp array, sized to the median array applied for at schools around Salford itself, models at about 174,700 kWh a year before shading, and needs roughly 653 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 44,500 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.

FIG. 1 Salford against the rest of Greater Manchester

Wigan828
Altrincham816
Bolton801
Salford794
Manchester788
Bury788
Stockport785
Rochdale771
Oldham771

Salford ranks 4 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 Salford falls as the roof peaks

The generating year and the school year are out of step in Salford. July and August carry 25.5 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 Salford school is fully occupied and its heating and lighting are at their heaviest. 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.

Across the country the arithmetic settles at roughly 49 percent of output on a session day, against about 71 percent for a weekday business. That figure hardly varies by location, which is why the local numbers that matter here are the yield, the roofs and what has already cleared planning nearby.

The weekly pattern repeats the annual one. Saturdays and Sundays generate as well as any other day and consume almost nothing, so before storage or export is even discussed it is worth knowing what the site does at a weekend, which only half hourly data will tell you.

That argues for a particular shape of scheme rather than against one. Size to the load that does not stop at the end of term, count in lettings, holiday clubs and summer works honestly rather than optimistically, and then decide whether storage or an export arrangement with Electricity North West pays for the surplus that is left.

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 Salford 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 Salford, 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	34	18	16
Mar	21	66	45	21
Apr	12	95	38	57
May	17	113	62	51
Jun	21	110	77	33
Jul	11	109	39	70
Aug	0	93	0	93
Sep	20	71	47	24
Oct	17	44	24	20
Nov	21	25	18	8
Dec	15	16	8	8
Year	190	793	387	406

Each bar is one month's output per kWp, divided at the school gate. The May bar is 7.1 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

Grid connection through Electricity North West

Connections around Salford 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).

The school estate in Salford

Salford has 98 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register teaching 37,685 pupils between them. Source: DfE Get Information About Schools.

The split is 76 primary, 16 secondary, 5 special and 1 further education, at an average of 385 pupils a site. That is 4.8 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.

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.

Book the survey

Send us the school postcode

A survey in Salford starts with three things from you. Give us the postcode, the approximate roof area and, if you can get it from your supplier, twelve months of half hourly readings. What comes back is a usable area figure per block, output modelled against your own load rather than an average, and the ways a Salford school can pay for it.

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 Salford trusts ask before a survey

How much would a school roof near Salford generate?: Modelled at 794 kWh per kWp a year, a 220 kWp array on a Salford school models at about 174,700 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 Salford?: It goes somewhere, just not into the timetable. 25.5 percent of the Salford 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 Salford 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 Salford 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 Salford on siting and design. Listed buildings and conservation areas are the usual exceptions. We put the position to Salford before a design is finalised.
Has a school near M6 already done this?: One school scheme is on record in this postcode district, including a 220 kWp array at The Albion Academy, London Street that holds consent and is awaiting construction. 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 Salford?: Salford has 98 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register, with 37,685 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.

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