Specialist solar panels for schools in York
26.2 percent of what a York 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.
26.2% of the modelled year lands in July and August, on a roof that returns 840 kWh per kWp a year. The worked example below runs at 440 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 York- 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 York models at 840 kWh a year, from modelled irradiation of 1,075 kWh per square metre in the plane of the array (EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss). 5 percent below our mean puts York at the weaker end of the range, which raises the premium on self consumption and lowers the value of anything that leaves the site.
Scaled up, a 440 kWp array, sized to what the nearest school scheme on record applied for, 22 miles away at Ripon, models at about 369,600 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 96,800 kWh landing in July and August and roughly 16,300 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.
York ranks 3 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 York schools
The YO1 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 York.
The closest recorded one is about 22 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 York falls as the roof peaks
The generating year and the school year are out of step in York. 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 14.3 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 4.4 percent of output falls in December and January, the two months when a York school is fully occupied and its heating and lighting are at their heaviest. The roof makes 7.1 times as much in May as it does in December, and August alone outproduces December by about 6 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 daily curve does the same thing in miniature. Load drops sharply after about three o'clock, generation does not, so the last three hours of a summer afternoon are pushing into an empty building unless something absorbs them. Half hourly meter data is the only way to see how much.
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 Northern Powergrid pays for the surplus that is left.
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 | 20 | 13 | 7 |
| Feb | 15 | 35 | 19 | 16 |
| Mar | 21 | 68 | 46 | 22 |
| Apr | 12 | 99 | 40 | 59 |
| May | 17 | 120 | 66 | 54 |
| Jun | 21 | 114 | 80 | 34 |
| Jul | 11 | 118 | 42 | 76 |
| Aug | 0 | 102 | 0 | 102 |
| Sep | 20 | 76 | 51 | 25 |
| Oct | 17 | 46 | 25 | 21 |
| Nov | 21 | 26 | 18 | 8 |
| Dec | 15 | 17 | 8 | 9 |
| Year | 190 | 841 | 408 | 433 |
Grid connection through Northern Powergrid
Northern Powergrid operates the distribution network across North Yorkshire, 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 North Yorkshire the planning database records 151 solar schemes totalling 1723 MW, of which 18 are operational (REPD Q1 2026).
The school estate in York
York has 64 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register teaching 24,762 pupils between them. Source: DfE Get Information About Schools.
The split is 51 primary, 9 secondary, 2 special and 2 further education, at an average of 387 pupils a site. At 5.7 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 York, 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
We survey school and college roofs throughout North Yorkshire. 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.
What York trusts ask before a survey
- What would a 440 kWp array produce at a York school?
- Yes, and the figure matters more than the sunshine. 840 kWh per kWp a year puts a 440 kWp array at around 369,600 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 York?
- 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 York?
- 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 York?
- 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 York. We confirm it either way.
- How many schools are there around York?
- York has 64 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register, with 24,762 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.