Specialist solar panels for schools in Basingstoke

School solar consented near Basingstoke

The Renewable Energy Planning Database records 1 school and college solar scheme in the RG21 postcode district. The Costello School is down for a an unstated capacity roof mounted array and the application holds consent and is awaiting construction. The applicant on record is Nero Energy.

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 Costello School or as any other Basingstoke site. Our knowledge of these applications comes entirely from the public record.

Solar PV for academy trusts across Hampshire

A one kilowatt-peak array on a shallow pitched roof in Basingstoke models at 906 kWh a year, from modelled irradiation of 1,163 kWh per square metre in the plane of the array (EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss). That is roughly 2 percent above the mean across the towns we cover, so latitude is working slightly in your favour here.

Scaled up, a 300 kWp array, sized to what the nearest school scheme on record applied for, 11 miles away at Thatcham, models at about 271,800 kWh a year before shading, and needs roughly 891 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 69,000 kWh landing in July and August and roughly 13,900 kWh across December and January. Scottish and Southern Electricity 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.

Why demand in Basingstoke falls as the roof peaks

The generating year and the school year are out of step in Basingstoke. 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. June is the strongest single month here at 13.8 percent of the annual total, which is still term time, and that works slightly in your favour against towns whose curve peaks in July.

At the other end of the year the mismatch flips. Only 5.1 percent of output falls in December and January, the two months when a Basingstoke school is fully occupied and its heating and lighting are at their heaviest. The roof makes 6 times as much in June as it does in December, and August alone outproduces December by about 5 to one. 73 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 Basingstoke changes that ratio much, but plenty about your own site changes what to do with it.

Then there is the afternoon. From roughly three o'clock the building empties while the roof is still working, so a system sized on annual consumption will over-generate in exactly the hours nobody is there. We size on half hourly data for that reason.

A Basingstoke 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 whole argument about term dates and the generation curve on the home page, and what it does to a payback figure under costs.

The school estate in Basingstoke and Deane

Basingstoke and Deane has 76 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register teaching 24,528 pupils between them. Source: DfE Get Information About Schools.

The split is 58 primary, 10 secondary, 6 special and 2 further education, at an average of 323 pupils a site. A ratio of 5.8 to one tells you where the roof area is. It is not with the 58 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.

Grid connection through Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks

Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks 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 Hampshire the planning database records 237 solar schemes totalling 1634 MW, of which 51 are operational (REPD Q1 2026).

What Basingstoke trusts ask before a survey

What would a 300 kWp array produce at a Basingstoke school?

Yes, and the figure matters more than the sunshine. 906 kWh per kWp a year puts a 300 kWp array at around 271,800 kWh, on roughly 891 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 Basingstoke?

Less is wasted than governors expect, but the figure is worth seeing: 25.4 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 Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks.

Who do we apply to for export near Basingstoke?

Only Scottish and Southern Electricity 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.

Do we need planning permission in Basingstoke and Deane?

Often not, because panels on the roof of a school building usually sit within permitted development for non-domestic buildings. The exceptions are listed buildings, conservation areas and arrays that project too far above the roof plane, and larger schemes still need prior approval from Basingstoke and Deane. We confirm it either way.

Has a school near RG21 already done this?

One school scheme is on record in this postcode district, including a 0 kWp array at The Costello School 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 Basingstoke?

Basingstoke and Deane has 76 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register, with 24,528 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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