Solar panels for schools across North Yorkshire

The school estate in North Yorkshire

North Yorkshire has 410 open state-funded schools and colleges teaching 104,307 pupils, spread across 2 local authorities. Source: DfE Get Information About Schools.

Of those, 344 primary, 50 secondary, 12 special and 4 further education. The phase mix is what sets the usable roof area across a county: secondary sites and colleges carry the sports halls, dining blocks and flat roofs, while primaries offer a hall and a teaching block each and suit arrays sized to the base load.

Solar for education buildings and what a North Yorkshire roof models

Modelled yield is not flat across North Yorkshire. Scarborough comes out at 859 kWh per kWp a year against 799 at Skipton, a spread of 60 kWh per kWp. On a 440 kWp school array that difference is about 26,400 kWh a year, which is worth checking before anyone accepts a county-wide saving figure. Source: EU PVGIS v5.2.

Every town page below carries the same arithmetic for that town, including the share of the year that lands in July and August, which is the number a governing body should see before a saving figure.

Solar PV for academy trusts on the North Yorkshire planning record

The Renewable Energy Planning Database records 1 school and college solar scheme in North Yorkshire, at Ripon. It is Ripon Grammar School, Clotherholme Road, applied for by Solar Options for Schools Limited. The median array applied for is 440 kWp.

We were not involved in that scheme. It is a public planning record, and it is here because what a local authority and a network operator have already accepted for one school is the best available guide to what they will accept for the next. Source: Renewable Energy Planning Database, Q1 2026.

Connections across the county run through Northern Powergrid. Anything above 3.68 kW per phase needs a G99 application, and on a school site the incoming supply and the size of the existing main switchboard are often the real constraint rather than the roof.