Solar panels for schools across Hampshire

The school estate in Hampshire

Hampshire has 479 open state-funded schools and colleges teaching 179,552 pupils, spread across 9 local authorities. Source: DfE Get Information About Schools.

Of those, 370 primary, 67 secondary, 31 special and 11 further education. The phase mix is what sets the usable roof area across a county: secondary sites and colleges carry the sports halls, dining blocks and flat roofs, while primaries offer a hall and a teaching block each and suit arrays sized to the base load.

School rooftop solar and what a Hampshire roof models

Modelled yield is not flat across Hampshire. Portsmouth comes out at 987 kWh per kWp a year against 903 at Aldershot, a spread of 84 kWh per kWp. On a 280 kWp school array that difference is about 23,520 kWh a year, which is worth checking before anyone accepts a county-wide saving figure. Source: EU PVGIS v5.2.

Every town page below carries the same arithmetic for that town, including the share of the year that lands in July and August, which is the number a governing body should see before a saving figure.

Solar PV for academy trusts on the Hampshire planning record

The Renewable Energy Planning Database records 1 school and college solar scheme in Hampshire, at Basingstoke. It is The Costello School, applied for by Nero Energy.

We were not involved in that scheme. It is a public planning record, and it is here because what a local authority and a network operator have already accepted for one school is the best available guide to what they will accept for the next. Source: Renewable Energy Planning Database, Q1 2026.

Connections across the county run through Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks. Anything above 3.68 kW per phase needs a G99 application, and on a school site the incoming supply and the size of the existing main switchboard are often the real constraint rather than the roof.