Specialist solar panels for schools in St Albans
3 school solar schemes sit on the public planning record around St Albans, Samuel Ryder Academy among them, and each one is a governing body that has already put this through an application. We look at the roof, the switchboard and the timetable in that order, then set the array size against what the site draws in term time.
25.6% of the modelled year lands in July and August, on a roof that returns 901 kWh per kWp a year. The worked example below runs at 170 kWp, the median size schools around St Albans have applied for. Source: EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss.
Book a roof survey in St Albans- 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.
Schools near St Albans already on the planning record
The Renewable Energy Planning Database records 3 school and college solar schemes in the AL1 postcode district. At Samuel Ryder Academy, a secondary school, a 200 kWp roof mounted array was withdrawn before determination. The applicant on record is Scholars Education Trust. Verulam School, Brampton Road applied for 160 kWp of roof mounted array, and that application was revised and resubmitted. The applicant on record is Earthpoints Limited. Verulam School is down for a 170 kWp roof mounted array and the application holds consent and is awaiting construction. The applicant on record is Earthpoints Limited.
We had nothing to do with any of them. They are public planning records, and they are on this page because the useful question for a governing body is not whether school solar works in the abstract but whether it has been consented nearby. Source: Renewable Energy Planning Database, Q1 2026.
The site plan at the top of this page is a generic estate drawn to show scale and sequencing. It is not Samuel Ryder Academy, and it is not any other building in St Albans. We hold no drawings, roof data or consumption data for the schools named above.
The median array applied for here is 170 kWp, with the largest at 200 kWp. At 170 kWp you are covering roughly 505 square metres of roof once walkways, edge zones and rooflight setbacks come out, which on most sites means a sports hall plus one teaching block rather than the whole estate.
| Site on record | Applicant on record | Size | Mounting | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Samuel Ryder Academy | Scholars Education Trust | 200 kWp | Roof | Application Withdrawn |
| Verulam School, Brampton Road | Earthpoints Limited | 160 kWp | Roof | Revised |
| Verulam School | Earthpoints Limited | 170 kWp | Roof | Awaiting Construction |
School rooftop solar across Hertfordshire
A one kilowatt-peak array on a shallow pitched roof in St Albans models at 901 kWh a year, from modelled irradiation of 1,154 kWh per square metre in the plane of the array (EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss). St Albans models 2 percent above our mean. That is a real advantage, though a smaller one than the difference between an array matched to the timetable and one matched to the roof.
Scaled up, a 170 kWp array, sized to the median array applied for at schools around St Albans itself, models at about 153,200 kWh a year before shading, and needs roughly 505 square metres of clear roof. That size is not one we chose. It is what schools in this district have actually applied for.
Spread across the year that is about 39,200 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.
St Albans ranks 3 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.
The summer holiday problem for a St Albans school
25.6 percent of the annual output modelled for St Albans arrives in the two months a school uses least (EU PVGIS v5.2). Term ends in the third week of July and the buildings stay largely empty until September. 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.
The inverse holds at the other end. December and January together return only 5.1 percent of the year, and those are the months with the heating, the lighting and the full timetable all running at once. The roof makes 5.9 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.
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.
The daily curve does the same thing in miniature. Load drops sharply after about three o'clock, generation does not, so the last three hours of a summer afternoon are pushing into an empty building unless something absorbs them. Half hourly meter data is the only way to see how much.
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 full treatment of the school year against 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 | 38 | 20 | 18 |
| Mar | 21 | 74 | 50 | 24 |
| Apr | 12 | 104 | 42 | 62 |
| May | 17 | 119 | 65 | 54 |
| Jun | 21 | 124 | 87 | 37 |
| Jul | 11 | 124 | 44 | 80 |
| Aug | 0 | 106 | 0 | 106 |
| Sep | 20 | 83 | 55 | 28 |
| Oct | 17 | 51 | 28 | 23 |
| Nov | 21 | 30 | 21 | 9 |
| Dec | 15 | 21 | 10 | 11 |
| Year | 190 | 899 | 438 | 461 |
Grid connection through UK Power Networks
UK Power Networks operates the distribution network across Hertfordshire, 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 Hertfordshire the planning database records 119 solar schemes totalling 844 MW, of which 12 are operational (REPD Q1 2026).
How many schools St Albans has
St Albans has 70 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register teaching 30,470 pupils between them. Source: DfE Get Information About Schools.
The split is 52 primary, 13 secondary, 4 special and 1 further education, at an average of 435 pupils a site. At 4 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 St Albans, 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.
Start with the St Albans roof
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.
Questions governors ask us about St Albans schools
- How much would a school roof near St Albans generate?
- Modelled at 901 kWh per kWp a year, a 170 kWp array on a St Albans school models at about 153,200 kWh. What decides whether that is worth doing is how much of it the school uses itself, not the total. Source: EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss.
- How does the school year affect a solar scheme in St Albans?
- It goes somewhere, just not into the timetable. 25.6 percent of the St Albans generating year lands in July and August (EU PVGIS v5.2), and a closed school still runs servers, comms, refrigeration and ventilation. What that base load does not absorb is either stored, exported under an agreement with UK Power Networks, or a sign the array is too big. We test which before sizing anything.
- Which network operator handles the connection at a St Albans school?
- Applications go to UK Power Networks, who run the network across Hertfordshire. An export-limited offer usually still works for a school, because the summer surplus is the part you were least likely to be paid much for anyway.
- What does St Albans require for solar on a school building?
- Roof-mounted solar on a non-domestic building often falls within permitted development under Part 14 of the General Permitted Development Order, subject to limits on how far the panels stand proud of the roof plane and, above a threshold, to prior approval from St Albans on siting and design. Listed buildings and conservation areas are the usual exceptions. We put the position to St Albans before a design is finalised.
- Has a school near AL1 already done this?
- 3 school schemes are on record in this postcode district, including a 200 kWp array at Samuel Ryder Academy that was withdrawn before determination. 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 St Albans?
- St Albans has 70 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register, with 30,470 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.