Specialist solar panels for schools in Lancaster
Electricity North West runs the network around Lancaster, and on a school site their answer on export shapes the design as much as the roof pitch does. We look at the roof, the switchboard and the timetable in that order, then set the array size against what the site draws in term time.
25.8% of the modelled year lands in July and August, on a roof that returns 797 kWh per kWp a year. The worked example below runs at 350 kWp, the median size schools across Lancashire have applied for. Source: EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss.
Book a roof survey in Lancaster- 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.
School rooftop solar across Lancashire
A one kilowatt-peak array on a shallow pitched roof in Lancaster models at 797 kWh a year, from modelled irradiation of 1,015 kWh per square metre in the plane of the array (EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss). 10 percent below our mean puts Lancaster 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 350 kWp array, sized to the median array applied for at schools across Lancashire, models at about 279,000 kWh a year before shading, and needs roughly 1,040 square metres of clear roof. We use that size because it is what schools across Lancashire have applied for, not because it suits the arithmetic.
Spread across the year that is about 72,000 kWh landing in July and August and roughly 10,600 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.
Lancaster ranks 4 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.
What the planning record shows around Lancaster
The Renewable Energy Planning Database holds no school scheme for the LA1 postcode district. 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 nearest education scheme on the record is 25 miles from Lancaster, at Blackburn: 0 kWp at Tauheedul Islam Girls High School, Preston New Road, applicant Star Academies, which holds consent and is awaiting construction. That is someone else's application, not ours, and it is here because it shows what Lancashire planning has already accepted at an education site. Source: Renewable Energy Planning Database, Q1 2026.
The summer holiday problem for a Lancaster school
25.8 percent of the annual output modelled for Lancaster arrives in the two months a school uses least (EU PVGIS v5.2). Term ends in the third week of July and the buildings stay largely empty until September. May is the strongest single month here at 14.7 percent of the annual total, which is still term time, and that works slightly in your favour against towns whose curve peaks in July.
The inverse holds at the other end. December and January together return only 3.8 percent of the year, and those are the months with the heating, the lighting and the full timetable all running at once. The roof makes 8.4 times as much in May as it does in December, and August alone outproduces December by about 6.6 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.
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.
Inside the day it happens again. The roof is still at three quarters of its peak at four in the afternoon, by which time a Lancaster school is largely empty, so the hours that look best on a generation chart are the worst on a consumption one.
None of that makes a Lancaster 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 Electricity North West, 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.
- 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 | 34 | 18 | 16 |
| Mar | 21 | 65 | 44 | 21 |
| Apr | 12 | 98 | 39 | 59 |
| May | 17 | 117 | 64 | 53 |
| Jun | 21 | 113 | 79 | 34 |
| Jul | 11 | 113 | 40 | 73 |
| Aug | 0 | 93 | 0 | 93 |
| Sep | 20 | 70 | 47 | 23 |
| Oct | 17 | 41 | 22 | 19 |
| Nov | 21 | 23 | 16 | 7 |
| Dec | 15 | 14 | 7 | 7 |
| Year | 190 | 797 | 386 | 411 |
Grid connection through Electricity North West
Electricity North West 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 Lancashire the planning database records 161 solar schemes totalling 521 MW, of which 25 are operational (REPD Q1 2026).
How many schools Lancaster has
Lancaster has 65 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register teaching 18,660 pupils between them. Source: DfE Get Information About Schools.
The split is 53 primary, 8 secondary, 3 special and 1 further education, at an average of 287 pupils a site. That is 6.6 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.
Start with the Lancaster roof
Lenzie Consulting Ltd arranges roof surveys for schools across Lancashire. Send the school postcode and a rough idea of the roof area, and the last twelve months of half hourly meter data if the school holds it. We come back with what the roofs can carry, what they would generate against your own consumption, and the funding routes open to a school.
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.
Questions governors ask us about Lancaster schools
- Is there enough sun around Lancaster for this to be worth doing?
- The model gives 797 kWh a year for every kWp installed at this latitude, so a 350 kWp array comes out at roughly 279,000 kWh a year before shading. It needs about 1,040 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 Lancaster school waste its generation in August?
- 25.8 percent of the modelled annual output for Lancaster 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 Electricity North West. We model all three against your half hourly data before an array is sized.
- Will the network around Lancaster accept the export?
- Electricity North West is the distribution network operator for Lancashire. 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 Lancaster?
- Usually permitted development covers a roof array on a school, with prior approval from Lancaster 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 Lancaster?
- Lancaster has 65 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register, with 18,660 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.