What would a 280 kWp array produce at a Winchester school?

Yes, and the figure matters more than the sunshine. 917 kWh per kWp a year puts a 280 kWp array at around 256,800 kWh, on roughly 832 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 Winchester?

Less is wasted than governors expect, but the figure is worth seeing: 25.3 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 Winchester?

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 Winchester?

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 Winchester. We confirm it either way.

How many schools are there around Winchester?

Winchester has 53 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register, with 16,263 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.

Specialist solar panels for schools in Winchester

A kilowatt-peak on a Winchester school roof models at 917 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.

256,800 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 Winchester

1 teaching block
2 hall and kitchen
3 sports hall
4 1960s block, no array
first phase
later phase

Drawing Illustrative estate, not a Winchester school

Blocks 4, 3 with array

Array about 345 kWp

Yield about 316,000 kWh/yr

Frontage about 90 m / Rev A / SO23

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.

Winchester / Hampshire

A school on the edge of a Home Counties town, solar arrays on its roofs and wooded low hills beyond — School buildings of the kind we survey across South East. Not a named school and not our work.

Solar PV for academy trusts across Hampshire

A one kilowatt-peak array on a shallow pitched roof in Winchester models at 917 kWh a year, from modelled irradiation of 1,180 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 3 percent above the mean across the towns we cover, so latitude is working slightly in your favour here.

Scaled up, a 280 kWp array, sized to the median array applied for at schools on the national planning record, models at about 256,800 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 65,000 kWh landing in July and August and roughly 13,400 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.

FIG. 1 Winchester against the rest of Hampshire

Portsmouth987
Fareham980
Southampton950
Eastleigh942
Winchester917
Andover915
Basingstoke906
Fleet904
Farnborough903

Winchester ranks 5 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.

Bars are zero based, so length is proportional to the figure. Where a county is flat, that is the finding: latitude is not the lever, the timetable is. Source: EU PVGIS v5.2, modelled per town

The planning position for Winchester schools

The Renewable Energy Planning Database holds no school scheme for the SO23 postcode district. 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 closest recorded one is about 17 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 Winchester falls as the roof peaks

The generating year and the school year are out of step in Winchester. 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 13.7 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 Winchester 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.

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 Winchester changes that ratio much, but plenty about your own site changes what to do with it.

Daily shape compounds it. A school's load climbs from breakfast club, holds through the teaching day and falls away from about three in the afternoon, while generation is still strong until six in high summer. That is why we size against half hourly meter data rather than against annual consumption: the annual figure hides both problems.

A Winchester 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.

FIG. 2 A Winchester roof against the English school year

generated while the school is open
generated at a weekend or in the holidays

The same figures as a table

Monthly output for a 1 kWp array in Winchester, split by whether the day is a school session day. Across the year 49 percent of generation lands while the school is open.
Month	Session days	Output, kWh per kWp	School open	School closed
Jan	20	26	17	9
Feb	15	40	21	19
Mar	21	76	51	25
Apr	12	107	43	64
May	17	122	67	55
Jun	21	126	88	38
Jul	11	126	45	81
Aug	0	106	0	106
Sep	20	83	55	28
Oct	17	52	29	23
Nov	21	31	22	9
Dec	15	22	11	11
Year	190	917	449	468

Per kWp installed, month by month, separating generation while the school is open from generation at a weekend or in the holidays. 73 percent of the Winchester year sits between April and September, most of which is term time; it is the tail of that period, the last week of July and all of August, that the school is not there for. The daily split is a flat apportionment of each month, not a metered one. Session days follow a typical English school year of 190 days. Your own trust or authority may differ by a few days either way. Source: EU PVGIS v5.2, session days from a typical school calendar

The school estate in Winchester

Winchester has 53 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register teaching 16,263 pupils between them. Source: DfE Get Information About Schools.

The split is 44 primary, 5 secondary, 2 special and 2 further education, at an average of 307 pupils a site. That is 8.8 primaries for every secondary, which is the ratio that matters for a roof: a primary of a few hundred pupils usually offers a hall roof and one teaching block, while a secondary site carries a sports hall, a dining block and several flat roofs.

If your trust holds several of them, the sequencing question comes before the sizing question. Roof age, covering type and the state of the incoming supply vary block by block across an estate, and that is normally what sets the order of works.

Aerial view of a school site with teaching blocks of several different ages, a sports hall and a playing field, solar arrays on two of the flat roofs — A school site with blocks of several ages, which is the usual starting point for a trust estate survey.

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).

Book the survey

Send us the school postcode

Roof condition decides the order of works on most school estates, so that is where we start. Send us the postcode and a rough roof area, with twelve months of half hourly readings if you have them, and we come back with usable area, modelled output against your own load, and the funding routes.

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 Winchester trusts ask before a survey

What would a 280 kWp array produce at a Winchester school?: Yes, and the figure matters more than the sunshine. 917 kWh per kWp a year puts a 280 kWp array at around 256,800 kWh, on roughly 832 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 Winchester?: Less is wasted than governors expect, but the figure is worth seeing: 25.3 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 Winchester?: 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 Winchester?: 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 Winchester. We confirm it either way.
How many schools are there around Winchester?: Winchester has 53 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register, with 16,263 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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