Specialist solar panels for schools in Tunbridge Wells
A kilowatt-peak on a Tunbridge Wells school roof models at 930 kWh a year, above the mean across the towns we cover, and the roofs it applies to are mostly carrying nothing. The survey records sheet type, remaining life, purlin spacing and the state of the incoming supply, and the model runs off your own meter data rather than an average.
930 kWh per kWp a year at this latitude, so a 360 kWp array, the size applied for at the nearest school scheme on record, models at about 334,800 kWh. Source: EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss.
Book a roof survey in Tunbridge Wells- 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 PV for academy trusts across Kent
A one kilowatt-peak array on a shallow pitched roof in Tunbridge Wells models at 930 kWh a year, from modelled irradiation of 1,193 kWh per square metre in the plane of the array (EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss). That is around 5 percent above the mean across the towns we cover, which is about as strong as a UK school roof gets.
Scaled up, a 360 kWp array, sized to what the nearest school scheme on record applied for, 11 miles away at Sevenoaks, models at about 334,800 kWh a year before shading, and needs roughly 1,069 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 86,400 kWh landing in July and August and roughly 17,400 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.
Tunbridge Wells ranks 7 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.
The planning position for Tunbridge Wells schools
The Renewable Energy Planning Database holds no school scheme for Tunbridge Wells and the area around it. Read that as a gap in the record, not a gap in the roofs: the database is reliable above one megawatt and thin below it, and a school array is typically a fifth of a megawatt.
The closest recorded one is about 11 miles away at Sevenoaks: The Sennocke Centre, High Street, a 360 kWp roof mounted array applied for by Sevenoaks School, which holds consent and is awaiting construction. We were not involved in it. We cite it because it is a public record of what has cleared planning in this part of Kent. Source: Renewable Energy Planning Database, Q1 2026.
Why demand in Tunbridge Wells falls as the roof peaks
The generating year and the school year are out of step in Tunbridge Wells. July and August carry 25.8 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 14 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 5.2 percent of output falls in December and January, the two months when a Tunbridge Wells school is fully occupied and its heating and lighting are at their heaviest. The roof makes 5.7 times as much in June as it does in December, and August alone outproduces December by about 4.8 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.
Summed over the year, about 49 percent of what a school roof makes arrives while the school is open. For a business trading every weekday the equivalent is roughly 71 percent. Nothing about Tunbridge Wells changes that ratio much, but plenty about your own site changes what to do with it.
And the week has the same hole in it. Two days in seven the site is closed altogether, at no cost to the generation, which is part of why the session day share sits where it does. Weekend lettings are the one lever a Tunbridge Wells school has over that, and they are worth counting properly.
A Tunbridge Wells governing body should read that as a sizing constraint, not a reason to stop. The base load that runs through the holidays, servers, comms, refrigeration, ventilation and hot water, is the floor the array should be built up from, and everything above it has to be justified by storage, export or summer occupancy.
We set out the complete version of the term time arithmetic 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 | 74 | 50 | 24 |
| Apr | 12 | 108 | 43 | 65 |
| May | 17 | 123 | 67 | 56 |
| Jun | 21 | 130 | 91 | 39 |
| Jul | 11 | 130 | 46 | 84 |
| Aug | 0 | 110 | 0 | 110 |
| Sep | 20 | 85 | 57 | 28 |
| Oct | 17 | 53 | 29 | 24 |
| Nov | 21 | 31 | 22 | 9 |
| Dec | 15 | 23 | 11 | 12 |
| Year | 190 | 931 | 453 | 478 |
The school estate in Tunbridge Wells
Tunbridge Wells has 42 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register teaching 19,323 pupils between them. Source: DfE Get Information About Schools.
The split is 32 primary, 8 secondary and 2 special, at an average of 460 pupils a site. That is 4 primaries for every secondary, which is the ratio that matters for a roof: a primary of a few hundred pupils usually offers a hall roof and one teaching block, while a secondary site carries a sports hall, a dining block and several flat roofs.
If your trust holds several of them, the sequencing question comes before the sizing question. Roof age, covering type and the state of the incoming supply vary block by block across an estate, and that is normally what sets the order of works.
Grid connection through UK Power Networks
Connections around Tunbridge Wells 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).
Send us the school postcode
A survey in Tunbridge Wells 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 Tunbridge Wells 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.
What Tunbridge Wells trusts ask before a survey
- How much would a school roof near Tunbridge Wells generate?
- Modelled at 930 kWh per kWp a year, a 360 kWp array on a Tunbridge Wells school models at about 334,800 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 Tunbridge Wells?
- It goes somewhere, just not into the timetable. 25.8 percent of the Tunbridge Wells 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 Tunbridge Wells school?
- Applications go to UK Power Networks, who run the network across Kent. 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.
- How many schools are there around Tunbridge Wells?
- Tunbridge Wells has 42 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register, with 19,323 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.