Specialist solar panels for schools in Pwllheli

School rooftop solar across Gwynedd

A one kilowatt-peak array on a shallow pitched roof in Pwllheli models at 887 kWh a year, from modelled irradiation of 1,120 kWh per square metre in the plane of the array (EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss). That is within a few percent of our mean. Latitude is not the variable here. When the building is occupied is.

Scaled up, a 380 kWp array, sized to what the nearest school scheme on record applied for, 80 miles away at St Helens, models at about 337,100 kWh a year before shading, and needs roughly 1,129 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 87,000 kWh landing in July and August and roughly 14,200 kWh across December and January. SP Energy 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.

What the planning record shows around Pwllheli

The Renewable Energy Planning Database holds no school scheme for Pwllheli 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 80 miles from Pwllheli, at St Helens: 380 kWp at The Sutton Academy, Elton Head Road, applicant Located Property Limited, which holds consent and is awaiting construction. That is someone else's application, not ours, and it is here because it shows what Merseyside planning has already accepted at an education site. Source: Renewable Energy Planning Database, Q1 2026.

The summer holiday problem for a Pwllheli school

25.8 percent of the annual output modelled for Pwllheli 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 14.8 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 8.2 times as much in June as it does in December, and August alone outproduces December by about 6.6 to one. 76 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.

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.

None of that makes a Pwllheli 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 SP Energy 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.

Grid connection through SP Energy Networks

Connections around Pwllheli are handled by SP Energy 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.

Across Gwynedd the planning database records 19 solar schemes totalling 221 MW, of which 6 are operational (REPD Q1 2026).

Questions governors ask us about Pwllheli schools

What would a 380 kWp array produce at a Pwllheli school?

Yes, and the figure matters more than the sunshine. 887 kWh per kWp a year puts a 380 kWp array at around 337,100 kWh, on roughly 1,129 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 Pwllheli?

Less is wasted than governors expect, but the figure is worth seeing: 25.8 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 SP Energy Networks.

Who do we apply to for export near Pwllheli?

Only SP Energy 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.