Specialist solar panels for schools in Dereham
What decides a solar scheme at a Dereham 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.
25.7% of the modelled year lands in July and August, on a roof that returns 898 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 Dereham- 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 Dereham models at 898 kWh a year, from modelled irradiation of 1,151 kWh per square metre in the plane of the array (EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss). Against a mean of 886 kWh per kWp across the towns we cover, Dereham is unremarkable, which is the useful finding: the scheme will be decided by the load curve, not the map.
Scaled up, a 210 kWp array, sized to what the nearest school scheme on record applied for, 20 miles away at Thetford, models at about 188,600 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 48,500 kWh landing in July and August and roughly 9,100 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.
Dereham ranks 6 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 NR19
No school or college solar scheme appears in the NR19 postcode district in the Renewable Energy Planning Database. That is a reporting threshold rather than a verdict. The database records generating stations from one megawatt upward reliably and smaller ones patchily, and almost every school array is a fraction of that, so a roof full of panels on a Dereham secondary could be generating today without ever reaching it.
Look 20 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 Dereham generation curve
A Dereham school roof generates most in the weeks its buildings are closed. 25.7 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. July is the single strongest month here at 13.8 percent of the annual total, and it falls almost entirely inside the holiday.
Winter reverses it. December and January between them return 4.8 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 6.2 times as much in July as it does in December, and August alone outproduces December by about 5.4 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 Dereham as anywhere else.
The same mismatch repeats every day. Peak generation lands between eleven and three, the timetable ends shortly after, and by four the site is down to caretaking and cleaning. An annual consumption figure cannot show that, which is why we ask for the half hourly data instead.
The conclusion is not that a Dereham 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 | 73 | 49 | 24 |
| Apr | 12 | 106 | 42 | 64 |
| May | 17 | 122 | 67 | 55 |
| Jun | 21 | 123 | 86 | 37 |
| Jul | 11 | 124 | 44 | 80 |
| Aug | 0 | 107 | 0 | 107 |
| Sep | 20 | 82 | 55 | 27 |
| Oct | 17 | 51 | 28 | 23 |
| Nov | 21 | 29 | 20 | 9 |
| Dec | 15 | 20 | 10 | 10 |
| Year | 190 | 898 | 436 | 462 |
Breckland schools, phase by phase
Breckland has 65 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register teaching 16,718 pupils between them. Source: DfE Get Information About Schools.
The split is 55 primary, 8 secondary and 2 special, at an average of 257 pupils a site. Read 6.9 primaries per secondary as a sequencing hint rather than a statistic. A primary is a single survey visit and a modest array; a secondary is several roofs of different ages on one site, and that is where both the area and the complications are.
A trust holding more than one of these sites should look at them together. Grouping the surveys turns the grid question, the funding question and the procurement route into one exercise rather than four, and it usually changes which roof goes first.
Grid connection through UK Power Networks
Connections around Dereham 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 Dereham school
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.
Dereham school solar, answered
- How much would a school roof near Dereham generate?
- Modelled at 898 kWh per kWp a year, a 210 kWp array on a Dereham school models at about 188,600 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 Dereham?
- It goes somewhere, just not into the timetable. 25.7 percent of the Dereham 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 UK Power Networks, or a sign the array is too big. We test which before sizing anything.
- Which network operator handles the connection at a Dereham school?
- Applications go to UK Power Networks, who run the network across Norfolk. 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 Breckland 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 Breckland on siting and design. Listed buildings and conservation areas are the usual exceptions. We put the position to Breckland before a design is finalised.
- How many schools are there around Dereham?
- Breckland has 65 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register, with 16,718 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.