Specialist solar panels for schools in Scarborough
26.2 percent of what a Scarborough 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.
378,000 kWh a year, modelled for a 440 kWp array on roughly 1,307 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 Scarborough- 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 North Yorkshire
A one kilowatt-peak array on a shallow pitched roof in Scarborough models at 859 kWh a year, from modelled irradiation of 1,088 kWh per square metre in the plane of the array (EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss). Scarborough sits 3 percent under our mean. Worth knowing, but not decisive: how well the array matches the timetable moves the answer further than the latitude does.
Scaled up, a 440 kWp array, sized to what the nearest school scheme on record applied for, 46 miles away at Ripon, models at about 378,000 kWh a year before shading, and needs roughly 1,307 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 99,000 kWh landing in July and August and roughly 15,500 kWh across December and January. Northern Powergrid 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.
Scarborough ranks 1 of 8 towns we cover in North Yorkshire on modelled yield, against a national mean of 886 kWh per kWp. The county runs from 799 to 859, a spread of 60 kWh per kWp. On a 500 kWp array that is about 30,000 kWh a year between the strongest and weakest town in the county.
The planning position for Scarborough schools
The YO11 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 Scarborough.
The closest recorded one is about 46 miles away at Ripon: Ripon Grammar School, Clotherholme Road, a 440 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 North Yorkshire. Source: Renewable Energy Planning Database, Q1 2026.
Why demand in Scarborough falls as the roof peaks
The generating year and the school year are out of step in Scarborough. July and August carry 26.2 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 14.6 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 4.1 percent of output falls in December and January, the two months when a Scarborough school is fully occupied and its heating and lighting are at their heaviest. The roof makes 7.8 times as much in May as it does in December, and August alone outproduces December by about 6.4 to one. 76 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.
Then there is the afternoon. From roughly three o'clock the building empties while the roof is still working, so a system sized on annual consumption will over-generate in exactly the hours nobody is there. We size on half hourly data for that reason.
None of that makes a Scarborough 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 Northern Powergrid, or a smaller array that consumes nearly everything it makes.
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 | 19 | 12 | 7 |
| Feb | 15 | 34 | 18 | 16 |
| Mar | 21 | 70 | 47 | 23 |
| Apr | 12 | 102 | 41 | 61 |
| May | 17 | 125 | 69 | 56 |
| Jun | 21 | 119 | 83 | 36 |
| Jul | 11 | 122 | 43 | 79 |
| Aug | 0 | 103 | 0 | 103 |
| Sep | 20 | 78 | 52 | 26 |
| Oct | 17 | 46 | 25 | 21 |
| Nov | 21 | 24 | 17 | 7 |
| Dec | 15 | 16 | 8 | 8 |
| Year | 190 | 858 | 415 | 443 |
Grid connection through Northern Powergrid
Northern Powergrid is the network operator here, and their answer on export capacity shapes the design. Any commercial array above 3.68 kW per phase connects under G99 rather than G98, and the application fixes what you are allowed to push back onto the network. If the local network is tight, limiting export rarely breaks the case here: most of the generation is consumed on site while the building is working.
Across North Yorkshire the planning database records 151 solar schemes totalling 1723 MW, of which 18 are operational (REPD Q1 2026).
The school estate in North Yorkshire
North Yorkshire has 346 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register teaching 79,545 pupils between them. Source: DfE Get Information About Schools.
The split is 293 primary, 41 secondary, 10 special and 2 further education, at an average of 230 pupils a site. At 7.1 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 North Yorkshire, 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
Lenzie Consulting Ltd arranges roof surveys for schools across North Yorkshire. Send the school postcode and a rough idea of the roof area, and the last twelve months of half hourly meter data if the school holds it. We come back with what the roofs can carry, what they would generate against your own consumption, and the funding routes open to a school.
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 Scarborough trusts ask before a survey
- What would a 440 kWp array produce at a Scarborough school?
- Yes, and the figure matters more than the sunshine. 859 kWh per kWp a year puts a 440 kWp array at around 378,000 kWh, on roughly 1,307 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 Scarborough?
- Less is wasted than governors expect, but the figure is worth seeing: 26.2 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 Northern Powergrid.
- Who do we apply to for export near Scarborough?
- Only Northern Powergrid 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 Scarborough?
- 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 Scarborough. We confirm it either way.
- How many schools are there around Scarborough?
- North Yorkshire has 346 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register, with 79,545 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.