Specialist solar panels for schools in Cromer
What decides a solar scheme at a Cromer school is how much of the output the site uses itself, not how much the roof makes. We arrange the roof survey, model the output against the school's own half hourly consumption, and set out the funding routes.
25.6% of the modelled year lands in July and August, on a roof that returns 923 kWh per kWp a year. The worked example below runs at 210 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 Cromer- 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 Norfolk
A one kilowatt-peak array on a shallow pitched roof in Cromer models at 923 kWh a year, from modelled irradiation of 1,166 kWh per square metre in the plane of the array (EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss). That is roughly 4 percent above the mean across the towns we cover, so latitude is working slightly in your favour here.
Scaled up, a 210 kWp array, sized to what the nearest school scheme on record applied for, 43 miles away at Thetford, models at about 193,800 kWh a year before shading, and needs roughly 624 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 49,600 kWh landing in July and August and roughly 8,900 kWh across December and January. UK Power Networks 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.
Cromer ranks 1 of 8 towns we cover in Norfolk on modelled yield, against a national mean of 886 kWh per kWp. The county runs from 897 to 923, a spread of 26 kWh per kWp. Within Norfolk that difference is small enough to ignore: where the building sits is not what decides this scheme, your consumption pattern is.
School solar on record near Cromer
Search the Renewable Energy Planning Database for Cromer and the area around it 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 43 miles out and there is one: The Bishops CE Primary Academy in Thetford, 210 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 Cromer generation curve
A Cromer school roof generates most in the weeks its buildings are closed. 25.6 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 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.
Winter reverses it. December and January between them return 4.6 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 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.
Nationally this comes out at about 49 percent of annual generation falling on a session day. A business open every weekday sees roughly 71 percent. The 22 point gap is what a school appraisal has to absorb, and it is much the same in Cromer as anywhere else.
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.
The conclusion is not that a Cromer school should do nothing. It is that the array should be sized to the load that survives the holidays, which is usually the server room, the catering refrigeration, the ventilation and the hot water, plus whatever the site lets out over the summer. Anything above that line needs storage or an export agreement with UK Power Networks to earn its keep.
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 | 38 | 20 | 18 |
| Mar | 21 | 77 | 52 | 25 |
| Apr | 12 | 111 | 44 | 67 |
| May | 17 | 128 | 70 | 58 |
| Jun | 21 | 127 | 89 | 38 |
| Jul | 11 | 127 | 45 | 82 |
| Aug | 0 | 110 | 0 | 110 |
| Sep | 20 | 85 | 57 | 28 |
| Oct | 17 | 51 | 28 | 23 |
| Nov | 21 | 28 | 20 | 8 |
| Dec | 15 | 20 | 10 | 10 |
| Year | 190 | 925 | 450 | 475 |
North Norfolk schools, phase by phase
North Norfolk has 56 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register teaching 10,160 pupils between them. Source: DfE Get Information About Schools.
The split is 46 primary, 7 secondary and 3 special, at an average of 181 pupils a site. 6.6 primaries per secondary is a mix weighted towards small sites. The roof area, and therefore most of the generation, sits with the 7 secondaries.
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.
Grid connection through UK Power Networks
Connections around Cromer are handled by UK Power Networks, 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 Norfolk the planning database records 179 solar schemes totalling 1490 MW, of which 43 are operational (REPD Q1 2026).
Book a roof survey at your Cromer school
We survey school and college roofs throughout Norfolk. 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.
Cromer school solar, answered
- Is there enough sun around Cromer for this to be worth doing?
- The model gives 923 kWh a year for every kWp installed at this latitude, so a 210 kWp array comes out at roughly 193,800 kWh a year before shading. It needs about 624 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 Cromer school waste its generation in August?
- 25.6 percent of the modelled annual output for Cromer 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 UK Power Networks. We model all three against your half hourly data before an array is sized.
- Will the network around Cromer accept the export?
- UK Power Networks is the distribution network operator for Norfolk. 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.
- How many schools are there around Cromer?
- North Norfolk has 56 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register, with 10,160 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.