Specialist solar panels for schools in Burnley
Burnley has 48 state-funded schools and colleges, and most of them are buying electricity in exactly the hours their own roofs could be making it. We start with the roof build up and the age of the covering, because across a school estate that is usually what decides which block goes first.
26.1% of the modelled year lands in July and August, on a roof that returns 774 kWh per kWp a year. The worked example below runs at 410 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 Burnley- 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 Lancashire
A one kilowatt-peak array on a shallow pitched roof in Burnley models at 774 kWh a year, from modelled irradiation of 987 kWh per square metre in the plane of the array (EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss). 13 percent below our mean puts Burnley at the weaker end of the range, which raises the premium on self consumption and lowers the value of anything that leaves the site.
Scaled up, a 410 kWp array, sized to what the nearest school scheme on record applied for, 6 miles away at Accrington, models at about 317,300 kWh a year before shading, and needs roughly 1,218 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 82,800 kWh landing in July and August and roughly 11,700 kWh across December and January. Electricity North West 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.
Burnley ranks 8 of 8 towns we cover in Lancashire on modelled yield, against a national mean of 886 kWh per kWp. The county runs from 774 to 888, a spread of 114 kWh per kWp. On a 500 kWp array that is about 57,000 kWh a year between the strongest and weakest town in the county.
School solar on record near BB11
Search the Renewable Energy Planning Database for the BB11 postcode district and nothing comes back under education. That is worth stating plainly and then setting aside: the register is built around generating stations, a school array is a fraction of the size it captures reliably, and plenty of school roofs never appear in any national record at all.
Look 6 miles out and there is one: St Christophers School, Queens Road in Accrington, 410 kWp, applied for by Solar Options for Schools Limited, 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 Burnley generation curve
A Burnley school roof generates most in the weeks its buildings are closed. 26.1 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. May is the strongest single month here at 14.6 percent of the annual total, which is still term time, and that works slightly in your favour against towns whose curve peaks in July.
Winter reverses it. December and January between them return 3.7 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 8.7 times as much in May as it does in December, and August alone outproduces December by about 7.1 to one. 76 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.
Across the country the arithmetic settles at roughly 49 percent of output on a session day, against about 71 percent for a weekday business. That figure hardly varies by location, which is why the local numbers that matter here are the yield, the roofs and what has already cleared planning nearby.
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.
That argues for a particular shape of scheme rather than against one. Size to the load that does not stop at the end of term, count in lettings, holiday clubs and summer works honestly rather than optimistically, and then decide whether storage or an export arrangement with Electricity North West pays for the surplus that is left.
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 | 16 | 10 | 6 |
| Feb | 15 | 31 | 17 | 14 |
| Mar | 21 | 63 | 43 | 20 |
| Apr | 12 | 95 | 38 | 57 |
| May | 17 | 113 | 62 | 51 |
| Jun | 21 | 109 | 76 | 33 |
| Jul | 11 | 110 | 39 | 71 |
| Aug | 0 | 92 | 0 | 92 |
| Sep | 20 | 69 | 46 | 23 |
| Oct | 17 | 40 | 22 | 18 |
| Nov | 21 | 23 | 16 | 7 |
| Dec | 15 | 13 | 6 | 7 |
| Year | 190 | 774 | 375 | 399 |
Grid connection through Electricity North West
Connections around Burnley are handled by Electricity North West, 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 Lancashire the planning database records 161 solar schemes totalling 521 MW, of which 25 are operational (REPD Q1 2026).
Burnley schools, phase by phase
Burnley has 48 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register teaching 15,019 pupils between them. Source: DfE Get Information About Schools.
The split is 38 primary, 5 secondary, 4 special and 1 further education, at an average of 313 pupils a site. 7.6 primaries per secondary is a mix weighted towards small sites. The roof area, and therefore most of the generation, sits with the 5 secondaries and the 1 further education site.
Across an estate of that size the roofs will not be in the same condition, and that is the point of surveying them together: the block with the best orientation is often not the block whose covering has twenty years left in it.
Book a roof survey at your Burnley school
A survey in Burnley 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 Burnley 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.
Burnley school solar, answered
- How much would a school roof near Burnley generate?
- Modelled at 774 kWh per kWp a year, a 410 kWp array on a Burnley school models at about 317,300 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 Burnley?
- It goes somewhere, just not into the timetable. 26.1 percent of the Burnley 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 Electricity North West, or a sign the array is too big. We test which before sizing anything.
- Which network operator handles the connection at a Burnley school?
- Applications go to Electricity North West, who run the network across Lancashire. 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.
- What does Burnley require for solar on a school building?
- Roof-mounted solar on a non-domestic building often falls within permitted development under Part 14 of the General Permitted Development Order, subject to limits on how far the panels stand proud of the roof plane and, above a threshold, to prior approval from Burnley on siting and design. Listed buildings and conservation areas are the usual exceptions. We put the position to Burnley before a design is finalised.
- How many schools are there around Burnley?
- Burnley has 48 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register, with 15,019 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.