Specialist solar panels for schools in Eastleigh
A kilowatt-peak on a Eastleigh school roof models at 942 kWh a year, above the mean across the towns we cover, and the roofs it applies to are mostly carrying nothing. 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.
263,800 kWh a year, modelled for a 280 kWp array on roughly 832 sqm of clear roof. That is the median size on the national planning record. Source: EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss.
Book a roof survey in Eastleigh- 1 teaching block
- 2 hall and kitchen
- 3 sports hall
- 4 1960s block, no array
- first phase
- later phase
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.
Solar PV for academy trusts across Hampshire
A one kilowatt-peak array on a shallow pitched roof in Eastleigh models at 942 kWh a year, from modelled irradiation of 1,209 kWh per square metre in the plane of the array (EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss). That is around 6 percent above the mean across the towns we cover, which is about as strong as a UK school roof gets.
Scaled up, a 280 kWp array, sized to the median array applied for at schools on the national planning record, models at about 263,800 kWh a year before shading, and needs roughly 832 square metres of clear roof. We use the national median from the planning record rather than a round number, so the example stays anchored to what schools have applied for.
Spread across the year that is about 66,700 kWh landing in July and August and roughly 14,000 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.
Eastleigh ranks 4 of 10 towns we cover in Hampshire on modelled yield, against a national mean of 886 kWh per kWp. The county runs from 903 to 987, a spread of 84 kWh per kWp. On a 500 kWp array that is about 42,000 kWh a year between the strongest and weakest town in the county.
The planning position for Eastleigh schools
There is no school entry for the SO50 postcode district in the Renewable Energy Planning Database. The register is dependable for anything from a megawatt upward and incomplete below it, and a school array is usually nearer a fifth of a megawatt, so this says more about the threshold than about Eastleigh.
The closest recorded one is about 23 miles away at Basingstoke: The Costello School, a 0 kWp roof mounted array applied for by Nero Energy, which holds consent and is awaiting construction. We were not involved in it. We cite it because it is a public record of what has cleared planning in this part of Hampshire. Source: Renewable Energy Planning Database, Q1 2026.
Why demand in Eastleigh falls as the roof peaks
The generating year and the school year are out of step in Eastleigh. July and August carry 25.3 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 13.9 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 5.3 percent of output falls in December and January, the two months when a Eastleigh school is fully occupied and its heating and lighting are at their heaviest. The roof makes 5.7 times as much in June as it does in December, and August alone outproduces December by about 4.7 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 Eastleigh changes that ratio much, but plenty about your own site changes what to do with it.
Inside the day it happens again. The roof is still at three quarters of its peak at four in the afternoon, by which time a Eastleigh school is largely empty, so the hours that look best on a generation chart are the worst on a consumption one.
A Eastleigh 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.
- generated while the school is open
- generated at a weekend or in the holidays
The same figures as a table
| Month | Session days | Output, kWh per kWp | School open | School closed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jan | 20 | 27 | 17 | 10 |
| Feb | 15 | 41 | 22 | 19 |
| Mar | 21 | 77 | 52 | 25 |
| Apr | 12 | 110 | 44 | 66 |
| May | 17 | 125 | 69 | 56 |
| Jun | 21 | 131 | 92 | 39 |
| Jul | 11 | 130 | 46 | 84 |
| Aug | 0 | 109 | 0 | 109 |
| Sep | 20 | 85 | 57 | 28 |
| Oct | 17 | 53 | 29 | 24 |
| Nov | 21 | 32 | 22 | 10 |
| Dec | 15 | 23 | 11 | 12 |
| Year | 190 | 943 | 461 | 482 |
The school estate in Eastleigh
Eastleigh has 44 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register teaching 20,088 pupils between them. Source: DfE Get Information About Schools.
The split is 34 primary, 7 secondary, 2 special and 1 further education, at an average of 457 pupils a site. A ratio of 4.9 to one tells you where the roof area is. It is not with the 34 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 operates the distribution network across Hampshire, so the export application goes to them. Anything larger than 3.68 kW per phase falls under G99, which means an application before commissioning rather than a notification afterwards. A constrained network is not the end of a scheme. Capping export costs little when the building already absorbs most of what the roof produces.
Across Hampshire the planning database records 237 solar schemes totalling 1634 MW, of which 51 are operational (REPD Q1 2026).
Send us the school postcode
The first survey answers three questions at once: what the roofs carry, what they generate against your own timetable, and how a Eastleigh school pays for it. Send the postcode, an approximate roof area per block and half hourly meter data if the school can get it from its supplier.
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 Eastleigh trusts ask before a survey
- Is there enough sun around Eastleigh for this to be worth doing?
- The model gives 942 kWh a year for every kWp installed at this latitude, so a 280 kWp array comes out at roughly 263,800 kWh a year before shading. It needs about 832 square metres of clear roof once walkways and rooflight setbacks are allowed for. Source: EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss.
- Does a Eastleigh school waste its generation in August?
- 25.3 percent of the modelled annual output for Eastleigh falls in July and August, when the buildings are closed for most of six weeks (EU PVGIS v5.2). It does not go to waste, but it only has three places to go: the base load that runs regardless, such as servers, catering refrigeration and ventilation; storage; or export under an agreement with Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks. We model all three against your half hourly data before an array is sized.
- Will the network around Eastleigh accept the export?
- Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks is the distribution network operator for Hampshire. Anything above 3.68 kW per phase connects under G99, and the application fixes the export limit. On a school site the incoming supply is often the binding constraint rather than the roof, so we ask that question before anyone sizes an array.
- Is planning permission needed for panels on a school in Eastleigh?
- Usually permitted development covers a roof array on a school, with prior approval from Eastleigh needed above a capacity threshold. A ground mounted array in the grounds is a different question and much more likely to need a full application. We check both before design sign-off.
- How many schools are there around Eastleigh?
- Eastleigh has 44 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register, with 20,088 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.