Solar panels for schools across Northumberland

The school estate in Northumberland

Northumberland has 164 open state-funded schools and colleges teaching 42,515 pupils, spread across 1 local authorities. Source: DfE Get Information About Schools.

Of those, 127 primary, 27 secondary and 10 special. 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.

School rooftop solar and what a Northumberland roof models

Modelled yield is not flat across Northumberland. Blyth comes out at 848 kWh per kWp a year against 803 at Hexham, a spread of 45 kWh per kWp. On a 450 kWp school array that difference is about 20,250 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 Northumberland planning record

The Renewable Energy Planning Database records 3 school and college solar schemes in Northumberland, across 2 of the towns we cover. They include Bede Academy North, Sixth Avenue at Blyth and King Edward Vi School, Cottingwood Lane at Morpeth. The median array applied for is 450 kWp.

We were not involved in any of those schemes. They are public planning records, and they are 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.