Specialist solar panels for schools in Lincoln
25.8 percent of what a Lincoln 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.
25.8% of the modelled year lands in July and August, on a roof that returns 882 kWh per kWp a year. The worked example below runs at 320 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 Lincoln- 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 Lincolnshire
A one kilowatt-peak array on a shallow pitched roof in Lincoln models at 882 kWh a year, from modelled irradiation of 1,127 kWh per square metre in the plane of the array (EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss). That is within a few percent of our mean. Latitude is not the variable here. When the building is occupied is.
Scaled up, a 320 kWp array, sized to what the nearest school scheme on record applied for, 26 miles away at Mansfield, models at about 282,200 kWh a year before shading, and needs roughly 950 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 72,800 kWh landing in July and August and roughly 13,300 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.
Lincoln ranks 7 of 8 towns we cover in Lincolnshire on modelled yield, against a national mean of 886 kWh per kWp. The county runs from 861 to 906, a spread of 45 kWh per kWp. On a 500 kWp array that is about 22,500 kWh a year between the strongest and weakest town in the county.
The planning position for Lincoln schools
The Renewable Energy Planning Database holds no school scheme for the LN6 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 closest recorded one is about 26 miles away at Mansfield: The Samworth Church Academy, Sherwood Hall Road, a 320 kWp roof mounted array applied for by eEnergy Group PLC, 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 Nottinghamshire. Source: Renewable Energy Planning Database, Q1 2026.
Why demand in Lincoln falls as the roof peaks
The generating year and the school year are out of step in Lincoln. 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. May is the strongest single month here at 13.8 percent of the annual total, which is still term time, and that works slightly in your favour against towns whose curve peaks in July.
At the other end of the year the mismatch flips. Only 4.7 percent of output falls in December and January, the two months when a Lincoln school is fully occupied and its heating and lighting are at their heaviest. The roof makes 6.4 times as much in May as it does in December, and August alone outproduces December by about 5.5 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.
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.
Daily shape compounds it. A school's load climbs from breakfast club, holds through the teaching day and falls away from about three in the afternoon, while generation is still strong until six in high summer. That is why we size against half hourly meter data rather than against annual consumption: the annual figure hides both problems.
None of that makes a Lincoln 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 National Grid Electricity Distribution, 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 | 22 | 14 | 8 |
| Feb | 15 | 37 | 20 | 17 |
| Mar | 21 | 72 | 49 | 23 |
| Apr | 12 | 103 | 41 | 62 |
| May | 17 | 122 | 67 | 55 |
| Jun | 21 | 119 | 83 | 36 |
| Jul | 11 | 122 | 43 | 79 |
| Aug | 0 | 105 | 0 | 105 |
| Sep | 20 | 81 | 54 | 27 |
| Oct | 17 | 50 | 27 | 23 |
| Nov | 21 | 29 | 20 | 9 |
| Dec | 15 | 19 | 9 | 10 |
| Year | 190 | 881 | 427 | 454 |
Grid connection through National Grid Electricity Distribution
Connections around Lincoln are handled by National Grid Electricity Distribution, 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 Lincolnshire the planning database records 226 solar schemes totalling 7052 MW, of which 37 are operational (REPD Q1 2026).
The school estate in Lincoln
Lincoln has 37 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register teaching 14,467 pupils between them. Source: DfE Get Information About Schools.
The split is 25 primary, 7 secondary, 4 special and 1 further education, at an average of 391 pupils a site. That is 3.6 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.
Send us the school postcode
Roof condition decides the order of works on most school estates, so that is where we start. Send us the postcode and a rough roof area, with twelve months of half hourly readings if you have them, and we come back with usable area, modelled output against your own load, and the funding routes.
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 Lincoln trusts ask before a survey
- How much would a school roof near Lincoln generate?
- Modelled at 882 kWh per kWp a year, a 320 kWp array on a Lincoln school models at about 282,200 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 Lincoln?
- It goes somewhere, just not into the timetable. 25.8 percent of the Lincoln 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 National Grid Electricity Distribution, or a sign the array is too big. We test which before sizing anything.
- Which network operator handles the connection at a Lincoln school?
- Applications go to National Grid Electricity Distribution, who run the network across Lincolnshire. 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 Lincoln 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 Lincoln on siting and design. Listed buildings and conservation areas are the usual exceptions. We put the position to Lincoln before a design is finalised.
- How many schools are there around Lincoln?
- Lincoln has 37 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register, with 14,467 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.