How much would a school roof near Blyth generate?

Modelled at 848 kWh per kWp a year, a 610 kWp array on a Blyth school models at about 517,300 kWh. What decides whether that is worth doing is how much of it the school uses itself, not the total. Source: EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss.

How does the school year affect a solar scheme in Blyth?

It goes somewhere, just not into the timetable. 25.9 percent of the Blyth generating year lands in July and August (EU PVGIS v5.2), and a closed school still runs servers, comms, refrigeration and ventilation. What that base load does not absorb is either stored, exported under an agreement with Northern Powergrid, or a sign the array is too big. We test which before sizing anything.

Which network operator handles the connection at a Blyth school?

Applications go to Northern Powergrid, who run the network across Northumberland. An export-limited offer usually still works for a school, because the summer surplus is the part you were least likely to be paid much for anyway.

What does Northumberland require for solar on a school building?

Roof-mounted solar on a non-domestic building often falls within permitted development under Part 14 of the General Permitted Development Order, subject to limits on how far the panels stand proud of the roof plane and, above a threshold, to prior approval from Northumberland on siting and design. Listed buildings and conservation areas are the usual exceptions. We put the position to Northumberland before a design is finalised.

Has a school near NE24 already done this?

2 school schemes are on record in this postcode district, including a 450 kWp array at Bede Academy North, Sixth Avenue that holds consent and is awaiting construction. We were not involved in it. It is a public planning record, and it matters less as proof that solar works than as evidence of what this authority and this network operator have already accepted. Source: Renewable Energy Planning Database, Q1 2026.

How many schools are there around Blyth?

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.

Specialist solar panels for schools in Blyth

2 school solar schemes sit on the public planning record around Blyth, Bede Academy North, Sixth Avenue among them, and each one is a governing body that has already put this through an application. A survey here starts with the covering and the structure, then the incoming supply, then what the timetable actually draws.

517,300 kWh a year, modelled for a 610 kWp array on roughly 1,812 sqm of clear roof. That is the median size schools around Blyth have applied for. Source: EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss.

Book a roof survey in Blyth

1 teaching block
2 hall and kitchen
3 sports hall
4 1960s block, no array
first phase
later phase

Drawing Illustrative estate, not a Blyth school

Blocks 4, 3 with array

Array about 345 kWp

Yield about 293,000 kWh/yr

Frontage about 90 m / Rev A / NE24

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.

Blyth / Northumberland

A school on the edge of a North East town, solar arrays on its roofs and low hills beyond — School buildings of the kind we survey across North East. Not a named school and not our work.

School solar consented near Blyth

The Renewable Energy Planning Database records 2 school and college solar schemes in the NE24 postcode district. Bede Academy North, Sixth Avenue is down for a 450 kWp roof mounted array and the application holds consent and is awaiting construction. The applicant on record is Emmanuel Schools Foundation. At Blyth Academy, Chase Farm Drive, a secondary school, a 610 kWp roof mounted array holds consent and is awaiting construction. The applicant on record is Solar Options for Schools Limited.

Those are other organisations' planning applications, not our projects. We list them because a scheme a few miles away tells you what this local authority and this network operator have already accepted for a building very like yours. Source: Renewable Energy Planning Database, Q1 2026.

The plan above the fold is a generic four block estate, drawn to make the scale and the phasing legible. Nobody should read it as Bede Academy North, Sixth Avenue or as any other Blyth site. Our knowledge of these applications comes entirely from the public record.

The median array applied for here is 530 kWp, with the largest at 610 kWp. At 530 kWp you are covering roughly 1,574 square metres of roof once walkways, edge zones and rooflight setbacks come out, which on most sites means a sports hall plus one teaching block rather than the whole estate.

Every one of them is a secondary school, which is worth knowing: a secondary site normally has a sports hall, a dining block and several flat roofs, which is where the usable area comes from.

Site on record	Applicant on record	Size	Mounting	Status
Bede Academy North, Sixth Avenue	Emmanuel Schools Foundation	450 kWp	Roof	Awaiting Construction
Blyth Academy, Chase Farm Drive	Solar Options for Schools Limited	610 kWp	Roof	Awaiting Construction

Solar PV for academy trusts across Northumberland

A one kilowatt-peak array on a shallow pitched roof in Blyth models at 848 kWh a year, from modelled irradiation of 1,078 kWh per square metre in the plane of the array (EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss). Blyth sits 4 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 610 kWp array, sized to the median array applied for at schools around Blyth itself, models at about 517,300 kWh a year before shading, and needs roughly 1,812 square metres of clear roof. That size is not one we chose. It is what schools in this district have actually applied for.

Spread across the year that is about 134,000 kWh landing in July and August and roughly 20,700 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.

FIG. 1 Blyth against the rest of Northumberland

Blyth848
Alnwick840
Berwick-upon-Tweed827
Cramlington825
Morpeth824
Hexham803

Blyth ranks 1 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.

Bars are zero based, so length is proportional to the figure. Where a county is flat, that is the finding: latitude is not the lever, the timetable is. Source: EU PVGIS v5.2, modelled per town

Why demand in Blyth falls as the roof peaks

The generating year and the school year are out of step in Blyth. July and August carry 25.9 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 14.5 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 percent of output falls in December and January, the two months when a Blyth school is fully occupied and its heating and lighting are at their heaviest. The roof makes 8.2 times as much in May as it does in December, and August alone outproduces December by about 6.7 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.

And the week has the same hole in it. Two days in seven the site is closed altogether, at no cost to the generation, which is part of why the session day share sits where it does. Weekend lettings are the one lever a Blyth school has over that, and they are worth counting properly.

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 whole argument about term dates and the generation curve on the home page, and what it does to a payback figure under costs.

FIG. 2 A Blyth roof against the English school year

generated while the school is open
generated at a weekend or in the holidays

The same figures as a table

Monthly output for a 1 kWp array in Blyth, split by whether the day is a school session day. Across the year 48 percent of generation lands while the school is open.
Month	Session days	Output, kWh per kWp	School open	School closed
Jan	20	19	12	7
Feb	15	36	19	17
Mar	21	69	47	22
Apr	12	102	41	61
May	17	123	67	56
Jun	21	117	82	35
Jul	11	119	42	77
Aug	0	101	0	101
Sep	20	77	51	26
Oct	17	45	25	20
Nov	21	25	18	8
Dec	15	15	7	8
Year	190	848	411	437

Per kWp installed, month by month, separating generation while the school is open from generation at a weekend or in the holidays. 75 percent of the Blyth year sits between April and September, most of which is term time; it is the tail of that period, the last week of July and all of August, that the school is not there for. The daily split is a flat apportionment of each month, not a metered one. Session days follow a typical English school year of 190 days. Your own trust or authority may differ by a few days either way. Source: EU PVGIS v5.2, session days from a typical school calendar

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).

The school estate in Northumberland

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. 4.7 primaries per secondary is a mix weighted towards small sites. The roof area, and therefore most of the generation, sits with the 27 secondaries.

Across an estate of that size the roofs will not be in the same condition, and that is the point of surveying them together: the block with the best orientation is often not the block whose covering has twenty years left in it.

Aerial view of a school site with teaching blocks of several different ages, a sports hall and a playing field, solar arrays on two of the flat roofs — A school site with blocks of several ages, which is the usual starting point for a trust estate survey.

Book the survey

Send us the school postcode

A survey in Blyth starts with three things from you. Give us the postcode, the approximate roof area and, if you can get it from your supplier, twelve months of half hourly readings. What comes back is a usable area figure per block, output modelled against your own load rather than an average, and the ways a Blyth school can pay for it.

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 Blyth trusts ask before a survey

How much would a school roof near Blyth generate?: Modelled at 848 kWh per kWp a year, a 610 kWp array on a Blyth school models at about 517,300 kWh. What decides whether that is worth doing is how much of it the school uses itself, not the total. Source: EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss.
How does the school year affect a solar scheme in Blyth?: It goes somewhere, just not into the timetable. 25.9 percent of the Blyth generating year lands in July and August (EU PVGIS v5.2), and a closed school still runs servers, comms, refrigeration and ventilation. What that base load does not absorb is either stored, exported under an agreement with Northern Powergrid, or a sign the array is too big. We test which before sizing anything.
Which network operator handles the connection at a Blyth school?: Applications go to Northern Powergrid, who run the network across Northumberland. An export-limited offer usually still works for a school, because the summer surplus is the part you were least likely to be paid much for anyway.
What does Northumberland require for solar on a school building?: Roof-mounted solar on a non-domestic building often falls within permitted development under Part 14 of the General Permitted Development Order, subject to limits on how far the panels stand proud of the roof plane and, above a threshold, to prior approval from Northumberland on siting and design. Listed buildings and conservation areas are the usual exceptions. We put the position to Northumberland before a design is finalised.
Has a school near NE24 already done this?: 2 school schemes are on record in this postcode district, including a 450 kWp array at Bede Academy North, Sixth Avenue that holds consent and is awaiting construction. We were not involved in it. It is a public planning record, and it matters less as proof that solar works than as evidence of what this authority and this network operator have already accepted. Source: Renewable Energy Planning Database, Q1 2026.
How many schools are there around Blyth?: 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.

Nearby

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