Specialist solar panels for schools in Sevenoaks

School solar consented near Sevenoaks

The Renewable Energy Planning Database records 1 school and college solar scheme in the TN13 postcode district. The Sennocke Centre, High Street is down for a 360 kWp roof mounted array and the application holds consent and is awaiting construction. The applicant on record is Sevenoaks School.

Those are other organisations' planning applications, not our projects. We list them because a scheme a few miles away tells you what this local authority and this network operator have already accepted for a building very like yours. Source: Renewable Energy Planning Database, Q1 2026.

The plan above the fold is a generic four block estate, drawn to make the scale and the phasing legible. Nobody should read it as The Sennocke Centre, High Street or as any other Sevenoaks site. Our knowledge of these applications comes entirely from the public record.

The median array applied for here is 360 kWp. At 360 kWp you are covering roughly 1,069 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.

Solar PV for academy trusts across Kent

A one kilowatt-peak array on a shallow pitched roof in Sevenoaks models at 920 kWh a year, from modelled irradiation of 1,181 kWh per square metre in the plane of the array (EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss). Sevenoaks models 4 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 360 kWp array, sized to the median array applied for at schools around Sevenoaks itself, models at about 331,200 kWh a year before shading, and needs roughly 1,069 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 84,800 kWh landing in July and August and roughly 16,900 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.

Why demand in Sevenoaks falls as the roof peaks

The generating year and the school year are out of step in Sevenoaks. July and August carry 25.6 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 13.9 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 5.1 percent of output falls in December and January, the two months when a Sevenoaks school is fully occupied and its heating and lighting are at their heaviest. The roof makes 5.8 times as much in June 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.

Put the two calendars together and roughly 49 percent of a school's generation nationally lands on a session day, against about 71 percent for a business open every weekday. That gap is the whole difference between appraising a school roof and appraising any other commercial one, and it barely moves from town to town.

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.

None of that makes a Sevenoaks scheme a bad one. It changes what the scheme should be: sized against the base load that runs whether or not the school is open, which on most sites is servers, comms, catering refrigeration, ventilation and hot water, with lettings, holiday clubs and summer works added on top. Where that base load is thin, the choices are storage, an export arrangement through UK Power Networks, or a smaller array that consumes nearly everything it makes.

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.

Grid connection through UK Power Networks

Connections around Sevenoaks 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 Kent the planning database records 237 solar schemes totalling 2072 MW, of which 45 are operational (REPD Q1 2026).

The school estate in Sevenoaks

Sevenoaks has 48 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register teaching 13,065 pupils between them. Source: DfE Get Information About Schools.

The split is 42 primary, 3 secondary and 3 special, at an average of 272 pupils a site. Read 14 primaries per secondary as a sequencing hint rather than a statistic. A primary is a single survey visit and a modest array; a secondary is several roofs of different ages on one site, and that is where both the area and the complications are.

A trust holding more than one of these sites should look at them together. Grouping the surveys turns the grid question, the funding question and the procurement route into one exercise rather than four, and it usually changes which roof goes first.

What Sevenoaks trusts ask before a survey

What would a 360 kWp array produce at a Sevenoaks school?

Yes, and the figure matters more than the sunshine. 920 kWh per kWp a year puts a 360 kWp array at around 331,200 kWh, on roughly 1,069 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 Sevenoaks?

Less is wasted than governors expect, but the figure is worth seeing: 25.6 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 UK Power Networks.

Who do we apply to for export near Sevenoaks?

Only UK Power 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 Sevenoaks?

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 Sevenoaks. We confirm it either way.

Has a school near TN13 already done this?

One school scheme is on record in this postcode district, including a 360 kWp array at The Sennocke Centre, High Street that holds consent and is awaiting construction. 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 Sevenoaks?

Sevenoaks has 48 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register, with 13,065 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.

Nearby

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All Kent locations