Solar panels for schools across Lancashire

The school estate in Lancashire

Lancashire has 439 open state-funded schools and colleges teaching 139,969 pupils, spread across 8 local authorities. Source: DfE Get Information About Schools.

Of those, 350 primary, 59 secondary, 22 special and 8 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 Lancashire roof models

Modelled yield is not flat across Lancashire. Blackpool comes out at 888 kWh per kWp a year against 774 at Burnley, a spread of 114 kWh per kWp. On a 350 kWp school array that difference is about 39,900 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 Lancashire planning record

The Renewable Energy Planning Database records 3 school and college solar schemes in Lancashire, across 3 of the towns we cover. They include Tauheedul Islam Girls High School, Preston New Road at Blackburn, Parklands High School, Southport Road - Solar Photovoltaic Panels at Chorley and St Christophers School, Queens Road at Accrington. The median array applied for is 350 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 Electricity North West. 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.