Specialist solar panels for schools in Market Harborough
The planning record around Market Harborough carries 2 school and college solar applications, the largest of them 170 kWp. 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.
25.8% of the modelled year lands in July and August, on a roof that returns 891 kWh per kWp a year. The worked example below runs at 170 kWp, the median size schools around Market Harborough have applied for. Source: EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss.
Book a roof survey in Market Harborough- 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 solar consented near Market Harborough
The Renewable Energy Planning Database records 2 school and college solar schemes in the LE16 postcode district. The Robert Smyth School, Burnmill Road is down for a 170 kWp roof mounted array and the application was revised and resubmitted. The applicant on record is Robert Smyth Academy. At The Robert Smyth School, Burnmill Road, a secondary school, a 170 kWp roof mounted array holds consent and is awaiting construction. The applicant on record is Robert Smyth Academy.
Those are other organisations' planning applications, not our projects. We list them because a scheme a few miles away tells you what this local authority and this network operator have already accepted for a building very like yours. Source: Renewable Energy Planning Database, Q1 2026.
The plan above the fold is a generic four block estate, drawn to make the scale and the phasing legible. Nobody should read it as The Robert Smyth School, Burnmill Road or as any other Market Harborough site. Our knowledge of these applications comes entirely from the public record.
The median array applied for here is 170 kWp. At 170 kWp you are covering roughly 505 square metres of roof once walkways, edge zones and rooflight setbacks come out, which on most sites means a sports hall plus one teaching block rather than the whole estate.
Every one of them is a secondary school, which is worth knowing: a secondary site normally has a sports hall, a dining block and several flat roofs, which is where the usable area comes from.
| Site on record | Applicant on record | Size | Mounting | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Robert Smyth School, Burnmill Road | Robert Smyth Academy | 170 kWp | Roof | Revised |
| The Robert Smyth School, Burnmill Road | Robert Smyth Academy | 170 kWp | Roof | Awaiting Construction |
Solar PV for academy trusts across Leicestershire
A one kilowatt-peak array on a shallow pitched roof in Market Harborough models at 891 kWh a year, from modelled irradiation of 1,136 kWh per square metre in the plane of the array (EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss). That sits within a few percent of the mean across the towns we cover, so what decides the scheme is the school's own demand pattern rather than where in the country it stands.
Scaled up, a 170 kWp array, sized to the median array applied for at schools around Market Harborough itself, models at about 151,500 kWh a year before shading, and needs roughly 505 square metres of clear roof. That size is not one we chose. It is what schools in this district have actually applied for.
Spread across the year that is about 39,100 kWh landing in July and August and roughly 7,400 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.
Market Harborough ranks 1 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.
Why demand in Market Harborough falls as the roof peaks
The generating year and the school year are out of step in Market Harborough. 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 13.9 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 Market Harborough school is fully occupied and its heating and lighting are at their heaviest. The roof makes 5.9 times as much in July as it does in December, and August alone outproduces December by about 5 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 Market Harborough changes that ratio much, but plenty about your own site changes what to do with it.
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 Market Harborough school is largely empty, so the hours that look best on a generation chart are the worst on a consumption one.
A Market Harborough 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 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 | 23 | 15 | 8 |
| Feb | 15 | 37 | 20 | 17 |
| Mar | 21 | 73 | 49 | 24 |
| Apr | 12 | 103 | 41 | 62 |
| May | 17 | 120 | 66 | 54 |
| Jun | 21 | 122 | 85 | 37 |
| Jul | 11 | 124 | 44 | 80 |
| Aug | 0 | 106 | 0 | 106 |
| Sep | 20 | 82 | 55 | 27 |
| Oct | 17 | 50 | 27 | 23 |
| Nov | 21 | 29 | 20 | 9 |
| Dec | 15 | 21 | 10 | 11 |
| Year | 190 | 890 | 432 | 458 |
The school estate in Harborough
Harborough has 42 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register teaching 13,965 pupils between them. Source: DfE Get Information About Schools.
The split is 36 primary and 6 secondary, at an average of 333 pupils a site. That is 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.
Grid connection through National Grid Electricity Distribution
National Grid Electricity Distribution operates the distribution network across Leicestershire, so the export application goes to them. Anything larger than 3.68 kW per phase falls under G99, which means an application before commissioning rather than a notification afterwards. A constrained network is not the end of a scheme. Capping export costs little when the building already absorbs most of what the roof produces.
Across Leicestershire the planning database records 165 solar schemes totalling 1259 MW, of which 37 are operational (REPD Q1 2026).
Send us the school postcode
We survey school and college roofs throughout Leicestershire. We need the postcode, a rough roof area and your half hourly meter data if the trust has it. From that we model what the roof carries, what it generates against the timetable, and which of the funding routes actually suits a school of your size.
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 Market Harborough trusts ask before a survey
- What would a 170 kWp array produce at a Market Harborough school?
- Yes, and the figure matters more than the sunshine. 891 kWh per kWp a year puts a 170 kWp array at around 151,500 kWh, on roughly 505 square metres of roof. The value of that depends on your term time load. Source: EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss.
- What happens to the electricity during the summer holidays in Market Harborough?
- Less is wasted than governors expect, but the figure is worth seeing: 25.8 percent of the year is modelled to arrive in July and August here (EU PVGIS v5.2), against a site running on holiday base load. Lettings, holiday clubs and summer works take some of it, storage takes more, and the rest is an export question for National Grid Electricity Distribution.
- Who do we apply to for export near Market Harborough?
- Only National Grid Electricity Distribution can answer it for your connection. What we can say is that a capped export limit rarely breaks a school scheme, because the array that suits a school is sized to the term time load rather than to the roof.
- Do we need planning permission in Harborough?
- Often not, because panels on the roof of a school building usually sit within permitted development for non-domestic buildings. The exceptions are listed buildings, conservation areas and arrays that project too far above the roof plane, and larger schemes still need prior approval from Harborough. We confirm it either way.
- Has a school near LE16 already done this?
- 2 school schemes are on record in this postcode district, including a 170 kWp array at The Robert Smyth School, Burnmill Road that was revised and resubmitted. We were not involved in it. It is a public planning record, and it matters less as proof that solar works than as evidence of what this authority and this network operator have already accepted. Source: Renewable Energy Planning Database, Q1 2026.
- How many schools are there around Market Harborough?
- Harborough has 42 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register, with 13,965 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.