Solar panels for schools across Kent

The school estate in Kent

Kent has 634 open state-funded schools and colleges teaching 274,119 pupils, spread across 12 local authorities. Source: DfE Get Information About Schools.

Of those, 487 primary, 115 secondary, 28 special and 4 further education. The phase mix is what sets the usable roof area across a county: secondary sites and colleges carry the sports halls, dining blocks and flat roofs, while primaries offer a hall and a teaching block each and suit arrays sized to the base load.

Solar for education buildings and what a Kent roof models

Modelled yield is not flat across Kent. Margate comes out at 990 kWh per kWp a year against 915 at Dartford, a spread of 75 kWh per kWp. On a 310 kWp school array that difference is about 23,250 kWh a year, which is worth checking before anyone accepts a county-wide saving figure. Source: EU PVGIS v5.2.

Every town page below carries the same arithmetic for that town, including the share of the year that lands in July and August, which is the number a governing body should see before a saving figure.

Solar PV for academy trusts on the Kent planning record

The Renewable Energy Planning Database records 2 school and college solar schemes in Kent, across 2 of the towns we cover. They include Westmount Education Centre at Dover and The Sennocke Centre, High Street at Sevenoaks. The median array applied for is 310 kWp.

We were not involved in any of those schemes. They are public planning records, and they are here because what a local authority and a network operator have already accepted for one school is the best available guide to what they will accept for the next. Source: Renewable Energy Planning Database, Q1 2026.

Connections across the county run through UK Power Networks. Anything above 3.68 kW per phase needs a G99 application, and on a school site the incoming supply and the size of the existing main switchboard are often the real constraint rather than the roof.