Specialist solar panels for schools in Coalville
25.8 percent of what a Coalville school roof makes arrives in July and August, which is when the buildings are shut. A survey here starts with the covering and the structure, then the incoming supply, then what the timetable actually draws.
164,000 kWh a year, modelled for a 190 kWp array on roughly 564 sqm of clear roof. That is 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 Coalville- 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 Leicestershire
A one kilowatt-peak array on a shallow pitched roof in Coalville models at 863 kWh a year, from modelled irradiation of 1,100 kWh per square metre in the plane of the array (EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss). Coalville sits 3 percent under our mean. Worth knowing, but not decisive: how well the array matches the timetable moves the answer further than the latitude does.
Scaled up, a 190 kWp array, sized to what the nearest school scheme on record applied for, 7 miles away at Loughborough, models at about 164,000 kWh a year before shading, and needs roughly 564 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 42,300 kWh landing in July and August and roughly 8,000 kWh across December and January. National Grid Electricity Distribution 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.
Coalville ranks 7 of 7 towns we cover in Leicestershire on modelled yield, against a national mean of 886 kWh per kWp. The county runs from 863 to 891, a spread of 28 kWh per kWp. Within Leicestershire that difference is small enough to ignore: where the building sits is not what decides this scheme, your consumption pattern is.
The planning position for Coalville schools
The LE67 postcode district has no education solar entry in the Renewable Energy Planning Database. Almost no school array is large enough to be captured there reliably, so the absence tells you about the reporting threshold and very little about what is already on the roofs around Coalville.
The closest recorded one is about 7 miles away at Loughborough: The Loughborough Schools Foundation Sports Hall, a 190 kWp roof mounted array applied for by Loughborough Endowed Schools, 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 Leicestershire. Source: Renewable Energy Planning Database, Q1 2026.
Why demand in Coalville falls as the roof peaks
The generating year and the school year are out of step in Coalville. 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. July is the single strongest month here at 14 percent of the annual total, and it falls almost entirely inside the holiday.
At the other end of the year the mismatch flips. Only 4.9 percent of output falls in December and January, the two months when a Coalville school is fully occupied and its heating and lighting are at their heaviest. The roof makes 6.1 times as much in July as it does in December, and August alone outproduces December by about 5.1 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.
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 weekly pattern repeats the annual one. Saturdays and Sundays generate as well as any other day and consume almost nothing, so before storage or export is even discussed it is worth knowing what the site does at a weekend, which only half hourly data will tell you.
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 National Grid Electricity Distribution pays for the surplus that is left.
We set out the whole argument about term dates and 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 | 22 | 14 | 8 |
| Feb | 15 | 37 | 20 | 17 |
| Mar | 21 | 70 | 47 | 23 |
| Apr | 12 | 101 | 40 | 61 |
| May | 17 | 119 | 65 | 54 |
| Jun | 21 | 118 | 83 | 35 |
| Jul | 11 | 121 | 43 | 78 |
| Aug | 0 | 102 | 0 | 102 |
| Sep | 20 | 79 | 53 | 26 |
| Oct | 17 | 48 | 26 | 22 |
| Nov | 21 | 28 | 20 | 8 |
| Dec | 15 | 20 | 10 | 10 |
| Year | 190 | 865 | 421 | 444 |
Grid connection through National Grid Electricity Distribution
National Grid Electricity Distribution 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 Leicestershire the planning database records 165 solar schemes totalling 1259 MW, of which 37 are operational (REPD Q1 2026).
The school estate in North West Leicestershire
North West Leicestershire has 53 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register teaching 14,294 pupils between them. Source: DfE Get Information About Schools.
The split is 46 primary, 6 secondary and 1 special, at an average of 270 pupils a site. At 7.7 primaries to every secondary, most of the buildings here are small. That is not a reason to skip them, but it does mean the usable area on a primary is a hall roof and a teaching block rather than an estate.
For a trust with more than one site in North West Leicestershire, the first survey is worth running across the whole estate. It tells you which roofs are near the end of their covering life, which have the switchboard headroom, and therefore which one should carry the first array.
Send us the school postcode
A survey in Coalville 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 Coalville 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 Coalville trusts ask before a survey
- Is there enough sun around Coalville for this to be worth doing?
- The model gives 863 kWh a year for every kWp installed at this latitude, so a 190 kWp array comes out at roughly 164,000 kWh a year before shading. It needs about 564 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 Coalville school waste its generation in August?
- 25.8 percent of the modelled annual output for Coalville 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 National Grid Electricity Distribution. We model all three against your half hourly data before an array is sized.
- Will the network around Coalville accept the export?
- National Grid Electricity Distribution is the distribution network operator for Leicestershire. 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 Coalville?
- Usually permitted development covers a roof array on a school, with prior approval from North West Leicestershire 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 Coalville?
- North West Leicestershire has 53 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register, with 14,294 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.