Specialist solar panels for schools in Chatham
What decides a solar scheme at a Chatham school is how much of the output the site uses itself, not how much the roof makes. We arrange the roof survey, model the output against the school's own half hourly consumption, and set out the funding routes.
25.7% of the modelled year lands in July and August, on a roof that returns 920 kWh per kWp a year. The worked example below runs at 280 kWp, 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 Chatham- 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 Kent
A one kilowatt-peak array on a shallow pitched roof in Chatham models at 920 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 4 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 what the nearest school scheme on record applied for, 11 miles away at Canvey Island, models at about 257,600 kWh a year before shading, and needs roughly 832 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 66,200 kWh landing in July and August and roughly 12,900 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.
Chatham ranks 10 of 12 towns we cover in Kent on modelled yield, against a national mean of 886 kWh per kWp. The county runs from 915 to 990, a spread of 75 kWh per kWp. On a 500 kWp array that is about 37,500 kWh a year between the strongest and weakest town in the county.
School solar on record near ME5
There is no school entry for the ME5 postcode district in the Renewable Energy Planning Database. The register is dependable for anything from a megawatt upward and incomplete below it, and a school array is usually nearer a fifth of a megawatt, so this says more about the threshold than about Chatham.
Look 11 miles out and there is one: Castle View School, Foksville Road in Canvey Island, 280 kWp, applied for by Castle View School, which holds consent and is awaiting construction. 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 Chatham generation curve
A Chatham school roof generates most in the weeks its buildings are closed. 25.7 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 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 5.8 times as much in July as it does in December, and August alone outproduces December by about 4.9 to one. 74 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 Chatham as anywhere else.
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.
The conclusion is not that a Chatham 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 UK Power Networks to earn its keep.
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 | 24 | 15 | 9 |
| Feb | 15 | 38 | 20 | 18 |
| Mar | 21 | 73 | 49 | 24 |
| Apr | 12 | 107 | 43 | 64 |
| May | 17 | 122 | 67 | 55 |
| Jun | 21 | 127 | 89 | 38 |
| Jul | 11 | 128 | 45 | 83 |
| Aug | 0 | 108 | 0 | 108 |
| Sep | 20 | 86 | 57 | 29 |
| Oct | 17 | 53 | 29 | 24 |
| Nov | 21 | 31 | 22 | 9 |
| Dec | 15 | 22 | 11 | 11 |
| Year | 190 | 919 | 447 | 472 |
Medway schools, phase by phase
Medway has 103 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register teaching 49,306 pupils between them. Source: DfE Get Information About Schools.
The split is 76 primary, 20 secondary, 5 special and 2 further education, at an average of 479 pupils a site. A ratio of 3.8 to one tells you where the roof area is. It is not with the 76 primaries, which mostly offer a hall and a teaching block each, but with the larger sites that were built with a sports hall and a dining block attached.
Where a multi-academy trust holds several of those sites, surveying the estate in one pass beats taking a roof at a time. The design work, the connection applications and the procurement paperwork are the same job repeated, and a trust that runs them together gets a better answer on all three.
Grid connection through UK Power Networks
UK Power 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 Kent the planning database records 237 solar schemes totalling 2072 MW, of which 45 are operational (REPD Q1 2026).
Book a roof survey at your Chatham school
We survey school and college roofs throughout Kent. We need the postcode, a rough roof area and your half hourly meter data if the trust has it. From that we model what the roof carries, what it generates against the timetable, and which of the funding routes actually suits a school of your size.
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.
Chatham school solar, answered
- Is there enough sun around Chatham for this to be worth doing?
- The model gives 920 kWh a year for every kWp installed at this latitude, so a 280 kWp array comes out at roughly 257,600 kWh a year before shading. It needs about 832 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 Chatham school waste its generation in August?
- 25.7 percent of the modelled annual output for Chatham 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 Chatham accept the export?
- UK Power Networks is the distribution network operator for Kent. 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 Chatham?
- Usually permitted development covers a roof array on a school, with prior approval from Medway 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 Chatham?
- Medway has 103 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register, with 49,306 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.