Specialist solar panels for schools in Fareham
A kilowatt-peak on a Fareham school roof models at 980 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.
343,000 kWh a year, modelled for a 350 kWp array on roughly 1,040 sqm of clear roof. That is the size applied for at the nearest school scheme on record. Source: EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss.
Book a roof survey in Fareham- 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 Fareham models at 980 kWh a year, from modelled irradiation of 1,262 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 11 percent above the mean across the towns we cover, which is about as strong as a UK school roof gets.
Scaled up, a 350 kWp array, sized to what the nearest school scheme on record applied for, 18 miles away at Chichester, models at about 343,000 kWh a year before shading, and needs roughly 1,040 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 87,500 kWh landing in July and August and roughly 17,800 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.
Fareham ranks 2 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 Fareham schools
The PO14 postcode district has no education solar entry in the Renewable Energy Planning Database. Almost no school array is large enough to be captured there reliably, so the absence tells you about the reporting threshold and very little about what is already on the roofs around Fareham.
The closest recorded one is about 18 miles away at Chichester: Chichester College, Westgate Fields, a 350 kWp roof mounted array applied for by Green Nation Solar 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 Sussex. Source: Renewable Energy Planning Database, Q1 2026.
Why demand in Fareham falls as the roof peaks
The generating year and the school year are out of step in Fareham. 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. June is the strongest single month here at 14 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 5.2 percent of output falls in December and January, the two months when a Fareham 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 4.8 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.
Nationally this comes out at about 49 percent of annual generation falling on a session day. A business open every weekday sees roughly 71 percent. The 22 point gap is what a school appraisal has to absorb, and it is much the same in Fareham as anywhere else.
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.
The conclusion is not that a Fareham school should do nothing. It is that the array should be sized to the load that survives the holidays, which is usually the server room, the catering refrigeration, the ventilation and the hot water, plus whatever the site lets out over the summer. Anything above that line needs storage or an export agreement with Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks to earn its keep.
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 | 43 | 23 | 20 |
| Mar | 21 | 80 | 54 | 26 |
| Apr | 12 | 114 | 46 | 68 |
| May | 17 | 130 | 71 | 59 |
| Jun | 21 | 137 | 96 | 41 |
| Jul | 11 | 136 | 48 | 88 |
| Aug | 0 | 114 | 0 | 114 |
| Sep | 20 | 88 | 59 | 29 |
| Oct | 17 | 55 | 30 | 25 |
| Nov | 21 | 33 | 23 | 10 |
| Dec | 15 | 24 | 12 | 12 |
| Year | 190 | 981 | 479 | 502 |
The school estate in Fareham
Fareham has 41 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register teaching 15,618 pupils between them. Source: DfE Get Information About Schools.
The split is 30 primary, 6 secondary, 4 special and 1 further education, at an average of 381 pupils a site. At 5 primaries to every secondary, most of the buildings here are small. That is not a reason to skip them, but it does mean the usable area on a primary is a hall roof and a teaching block rather than an estate.
For a trust with more than one site in Fareham, the first survey is worth running across the whole estate. It tells you which roofs are near the end of their covering life, which have the switchboard headroom, and therefore which one should carry the first array.
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 Fareham 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 Fareham trusts ask before a survey
- Is there enough sun around Fareham for this to be worth doing?
- The model gives 980 kWh a year for every kWp installed at this latitude, so a 350 kWp array comes out at roughly 343,000 kWh a year before shading. It needs about 1,040 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 Fareham school waste its generation in August?
- 25.5 percent of the modelled annual output for Fareham 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 Fareham 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 Fareham?
- Usually permitted development covers a roof array on a school, with prior approval from Fareham 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 Fareham?
- Fareham has 41 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register, with 15,618 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.