Specialist solar panels for schools in Great Yarmouth
25.7 percent of what a Great Yarmouth 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.
193,200 kWh a year, modelled for a 210 kWp array on roughly 624 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 Great Yarmouth- 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 Norfolk
A one kilowatt-peak array on a shallow pitched roof in Great Yarmouth models at 920 kWh a year, from modelled irradiation of 1,176 kWh per square metre in the plane of the array (EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss). Great Yarmouth models 4 percent above our mean. That is a real advantage, though a smaller one than the difference between an array matched to the timetable and one matched to the roof.
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 193,200 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 49,700 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.
Great Yarmouth ranks 2 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.
The planning position for Great Yarmouth schools
The NR31 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 Great Yarmouth.
The closest recorded one is about 43 miles away at Thetford: The Bishops CE Primary Academy, a 210 kWp roof mounted array applied for by Solar Options for Schools Limited, 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 Norfolk. Source: Renewable Energy Planning Database, Q1 2026.
Why demand in Great Yarmouth falls as the roof peaks
The generating year and the school year are out of step in Great Yarmouth. July and August carry 25.7 percent of the modelled output (EU PVGIS v5.2), and the site is closed for most of those nine weeks. June is the strongest single month here at 14 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 Great Yarmouth school is fully occupied and its heating and lighting are at their heaviest. The roof makes 6.5 times as much in June as it does in December, and August alone outproduces December by about 5.5 to one. 75 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 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.
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 UK Power Networks 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 | 23 | 15 | 8 |
| Feb | 15 | 37 | 20 | 17 |
| Mar | 21 | 74 | 50 | 24 |
| Apr | 12 | 112 | 45 | 67 |
| May | 17 | 128 | 70 | 58 |
| Jun | 21 | 129 | 90 | 39 |
| Jul | 11 | 127 | 45 | 82 |
| Aug | 0 | 109 | 0 | 109 |
| Sep | 20 | 84 | 56 | 28 |
| Oct | 17 | 49 | 27 | 22 |
| Nov | 21 | 28 | 20 | 8 |
| Dec | 15 | 20 | 10 | 10 |
| Year | 190 | 920 | 448 | 472 |
Grid connection through UK Power Networks
UK Power Networks operates the distribution network across Norfolk, 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 Norfolk the planning database records 179 solar schemes totalling 1490 MW, of which 43 are operational (REPD Q1 2026).
The school estate in Great Yarmouth
Great Yarmouth has 39 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register teaching 12,850 pupils between them. Source: DfE Get Information About Schools.
The split is 30 primary, 6 secondary, 2 special and 1 further education, at an average of 329 pupils a site. At 5 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 Great Yarmouth, 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
The first survey answers three questions at once: what the roofs carry, what they generate against your own timetable, and how a Great Yarmouth school pays for it. Send the postcode, an approximate roof area per block and half hourly meter data if the school can get it from its supplier.
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 Great Yarmouth trusts ask before a survey
- What would a 210 kWp array produce at a Great Yarmouth school?
- Yes, and the figure matters more than the sunshine. 920 kWh per kWp a year puts a 210 kWp array at around 193,200 kWh, on roughly 624 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 Great Yarmouth?
- Less is wasted than governors expect, but the figure is worth seeing: 25.7 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 UK Power Networks.
- Who do we apply to for export near Great Yarmouth?
- Only UK Power Networks 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 Great Yarmouth?
- 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 Great Yarmouth. We confirm it either way.
- How many schools are there around Great Yarmouth?
- Great Yarmouth has 39 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register, with 12,850 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.