Specialist solar panels for schools in Borehamwood
Hertsmere has 41 state-funded schools and colleges, and most of them are buying electricity in exactly the hours their own roofs could be making it. We start with the roof build up and the age of the covering, because across a school estate that is usually what decides which block goes first.
152,200 kWh a year, modelled for a 170 kWp array on roughly 505 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 Borehamwood- 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 for education buildings across Hertfordshire
A one kilowatt-peak array on a shallow pitched roof in Borehamwood models at 895 kWh a year, from modelled irradiation of 1,150 kWh per square metre in the plane of the array (EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss). That puts Borehamwood in the middle of the national range, close enough to our mean of 886 kWh per kWp that the interesting question moves straight to consumption.
Scaled up, a 170 kWp array, sized to what the nearest school scheme on record applied for, 7 miles away at St Albans, models at about 152,200 kWh a year before shading, and needs roughly 505 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 39,000 kWh landing in July and August and roughly 7,800 kWh across December and January. UK Power 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.
Borehamwood ranks 10 of 10 towns we cover in Hertfordshire on modelled yield, against a national mean of 886 kWh per kWp. The county runs from 895 to 911, a spread of 16 kWh per kWp. Within Hertfordshire that difference is small enough to ignore: where the building sits is not what decides this scheme, your consumption pattern is.
School solar on record near WD6
Search the Renewable Energy Planning Database for the WD6 postcode district and nothing comes back under education. That is worth stating plainly and then setting aside: the register is built around generating stations, a school array is a fraction of the size it captures reliably, and plenty of school roofs never appear in any national record at all.
Look 7 miles out and there is one: Samuel Ryder Academy in St Albans, 200 kWp, applied for by Scholars Education Trust, which was withdrawn before determination. None of our doing. It is a public planning record, and the nearest evidence available of how an application like yours is treated around here. Source: Renewable Energy Planning Database, Q1 2026.
Term dates against the Borehamwood generation curve
A Borehamwood school roof generates most in the weeks its buildings are closed. 25.6 percent of the modelled year lands in July and August alone (EU PVGIS v5.2), and the summer holiday takes roughly six of those nine weeks out of the timetable. July is the single strongest month here at 13.9 percent of the annual total, and it falls almost entirely inside the holiday.
Winter reverses it. December and January between them return 5.1 percent of the modelled year, and that is when the heating, the lighting and a full register are all drawing at the same time. The roof makes 5.9 times as much in July 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.
Across the country the arithmetic settles at roughly 49 percent of output on a session day, against about 71 percent for a weekday business. That figure hardly varies by location, which is why the local numbers that matter here are the yield, the roofs and what has already cleared planning nearby.
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.
That argues for a particular shape of scheme rather than against one. Size to the load that does not stop at the end of term, count in lettings, holiday clubs and summer works honestly rather than optimistically, and then decide whether storage or an export arrangement with UK Power Networks pays for the surplus that is left.
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 | 25 | 16 | 9 |
| Feb | 15 | 39 | 21 | 18 |
| Mar | 21 | 73 | 49 | 24 |
| Apr | 12 | 103 | 41 | 62 |
| May | 17 | 118 | 65 | 53 |
| Jun | 21 | 123 | 86 | 37 |
| Jul | 11 | 124 | 44 | 80 |
| Aug | 0 | 105 | 0 | 105 |
| Sep | 20 | 82 | 55 | 27 |
| Oct | 17 | 51 | 28 | 23 |
| Nov | 21 | 30 | 21 | 9 |
| Dec | 15 | 21 | 10 | 11 |
| Year | 190 | 894 | 436 | 458 |
Grid connection through UK Power Networks
Connections around Borehamwood are handled by UK Power Networks, which sets the export limit for the site. Above 3.68 kW per phase the connection runs under G99, so the export limit is agreed in advance rather than assumed. Where the local network is constrained, an export-limited connection usually still makes the scheme work, because a school uses most of what the roof makes during the working day.
Across Hertfordshire the planning database records 119 solar schemes totalling 844 MW, of which 12 are operational (REPD Q1 2026).
Hertsmere schools, phase by phase
Hertsmere has 41 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register teaching 16,497 pupils between them. Source: DfE Get Information About Schools.
The split is 31 primary, 8 secondary and 2 special, at an average of 402 pupils a site. 3.9 primaries per secondary is a mix weighted towards small sites. The roof area, and therefore most of the generation, sits with the 8 secondaries.
Across an estate of that size the roofs will not be in the same condition, and that is the point of surveying them together: the block with the best orientation is often not the block whose covering has twenty years left in it.
Book a roof survey at your Borehamwood school
A survey in Borehamwood starts with three things from you. Give us the postcode, the approximate roof area and, if you can get it from your supplier, twelve months of half hourly readings. What comes back is a usable area figure per block, output modelled against your own load rather than an average, and the ways a Borehamwood school can pay for it.
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.
Borehamwood school solar, answered
- Is there enough sun around Borehamwood for this to be worth doing?
- The model gives 895 kWh a year for every kWp installed at this latitude, so a 170 kWp array comes out at roughly 152,200 kWh a year before shading. It needs about 505 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 Borehamwood school waste its generation in August?
- 25.6 percent of the modelled annual output for Borehamwood 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 UK Power Networks. We model all three against your half hourly data before an array is sized.
- Will the network around Borehamwood accept the export?
- UK Power Networks is the distribution network operator for Hertfordshire. 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 Borehamwood?
- Usually permitted development covers a roof array on a school, with prior approval from Hertsmere 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 Borehamwood?
- Hertsmere has 41 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register, with 16,497 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.