Specialist solar panels for schools in Alnwick
Northern Powergrid runs the network around Alnwick, and on a school site their answer on export shapes the design as much as the roof pitch does. We look at the roof, the switchboard and the timetable in that order, then set the array size against what the site draws in term time.
226,800 kWh a year, modelled for a 270 kWp array on roughly 802 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 Alnwick- 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.
School rooftop solar across Northumberland
A one kilowatt-peak array on a shallow pitched roof in Alnwick models at 840 kWh a year, from modelled irradiation of 1,066 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 Alnwick 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 270 kWp array, sized to what the nearest school scheme on record applied for, 17 miles away at Morpeth, models at about 226,800 kWh a year before shading, and needs roughly 802 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 59,400 kWh landing in July and August and roughly 8,600 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.
Alnwick ranks 2 of 6 towns we cover in Northumberland on modelled yield, against a national mean of 886 kWh per kWp. The county runs from 803 to 848, a spread of 45 kWh per kWp. On a 500 kWp array that is about 22,500 kWh a year between the strongest and weakest town in the county.
What the planning record shows around Alnwick
No school or college solar scheme appears in Alnwick and the area around it in the Renewable Energy Planning Database. That is a reporting threshold rather than a verdict. The database records generating stations from one megawatt upward reliably and smaller ones patchily, and almost every school array is a fraction of that, so a roof full of panels on a Alnwick secondary could be generating today without ever reaching it.
The nearest education scheme on the record is 17 miles from Alnwick, at Morpeth: 270 kWp at King Edward Vi School, Cottingwood Lane, applicant The Three Rivers Trust, which holds consent and is awaiting construction. That is someone else's application, not ours, and it is here because it shows what Northumberland planning has already accepted at an education site. Source: Renewable Energy Planning Database, Q1 2026.
The summer holiday problem for a Alnwick school
26.2 percent of the annual output modelled for Alnwick arrives in the two months a school uses least (EU PVGIS v5.2). Term ends in the third week of July and the buildings stay largely empty until September. May is the strongest single month here at 14.8 percent of the annual total, which is still term time, and that works slightly in your favour against towns whose curve peaks in July.
The inverse holds at the other end. December and January together return only 3.8 percent of the year, and those are the months with the heating, the lighting and the full timetable all running at once. The roof makes 8.9 times as much in May as it does in December, and August alone outproduces December by about 7.2 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.
Inside the day it happens again. The roof is still at three quarters of its peak at four in the afternoon, by which time a Alnwick school is largely empty, so the hours that look best on a generation chart are the worst on a consumption one.
None of that makes a Alnwick 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 | 18 | 12 | 6 |
| Feb | 15 | 34 | 18 | 16 |
| Mar | 21 | 67 | 45 | 22 |
| Apr | 12 | 101 | 40 | 61 |
| May | 17 | 124 | 68 | 56 |
| Jun | 21 | 118 | 83 | 35 |
| Jul | 11 | 119 | 42 | 77 |
| Aug | 0 | 101 | 0 | 101 |
| Sep | 20 | 76 | 51 | 25 |
| Oct | 17 | 44 | 24 | 20 |
| Nov | 21 | 23 | 16 | 7 |
| Dec | 15 | 14 | 7 | 7 |
| Year | 190 | 839 | 406 | 433 |
Grid connection through Northern Powergrid
Northern Powergrid operates the distribution network across Northumberland, 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 Northumberland the planning database records 38 solar schemes totalling 276 MW, of which 2 are operational (REPD Q1 2026).
How many schools Northumberland has
Northumberland has 164 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register teaching 42,515 pupils between them. Source: DfE Get Information About Schools.
The split is 127 primary, 27 secondary and 10 special, at an average of 259 pupils a site. Read 4.7 primaries per secondary as a sequencing hint rather than a statistic. A primary is a single survey visit and a modest array; a secondary is several roofs of different ages on one site, and that is where both the area and the complications are.
A trust holding more than one of these sites should look at them together. Grouping the surveys turns the grid question, the funding question and the procurement route into one exercise rather than four, and it usually changes which roof goes first.
Start with the Alnwick roof
Roof condition decides the order of works on most school estates, so that is where we start. Send us the postcode and a rough roof area, with twelve months of half hourly readings if you have them, and we come back with usable area, modelled output against your own load, and the funding routes.
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.
Questions governors ask us about Alnwick schools
- Is there enough sun around Alnwick for this to be worth doing?
- The model gives 840 kWh a year for every kWp installed at this latitude, so a 270 kWp array comes out at roughly 226,800 kWh a year before shading. It needs about 802 square metres of clear roof once walkways and rooflight setbacks are allowed for. Source: EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss.
- Does a Alnwick school waste its generation in August?
- 26.2 percent of the modelled annual output for Alnwick falls in July and August, when the buildings are closed for most of six weeks (EU PVGIS v5.2). It does not go to waste, but it only has three places to go: the base load that runs regardless, such as servers, catering refrigeration and ventilation; storage; or export under an agreement with Northern Powergrid. We model all three against your half hourly data before an array is sized.
- Will the network around Alnwick accept the export?
- Northern Powergrid is the distribution network operator for Northumberland. Anything above 3.68 kW per phase connects under G99, and the application fixes the export limit. On a school site the incoming supply is often the binding constraint rather than the roof, so we ask that question before anyone sizes an array.
- How many schools are there around Alnwick?
- Northumberland has 164 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register, with 42,515 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.