Specialist solar panels for schools in Hexham

Solar PV for academy trusts across Northumberland

A one kilowatt-peak array on a shallow pitched roof in Hexham models at 803 kWh a year, from modelled irradiation of 1,019 kWh per square metre in the plane of the array (EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss). 9 percent below our mean puts Hexham 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, 21 miles away at Morpeth, models at about 216,800 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 57,200 kWh landing in July and August and roughly 8,700 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.

The planning position for Hexham schools

The NE46 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 Hexham.

The closest recorded one is about 21 miles away at Morpeth: King Edward Vi School, Cottingwood Lane, a 270 kWp roof mounted array applied for by The Three Rivers Trust, 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 Northumberland. Source: Renewable Energy Planning Database, Q1 2026.

Why demand in Hexham falls as the roof peaks

The generating year and the school year are out of step in Hexham. July and August carry 26.4 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 percent of output falls in December and January, the two months when a Hexham school is fully occupied and its heating and lighting are at their heaviest. The roof makes 8.4 times as much in May as it does in December, and August alone outproduces December by about 6.9 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.

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 Hexham 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 Hexham 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 full treatment of the school year against the generation curve on the home page, and what it does to a payback figure under costs.

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. At 4.7 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 Northumberland, 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.

What Hexham trusts ask before a survey

What would a 270 kWp array produce at a Hexham school?

Yes, and the figure matters more than the sunshine. 803 kWh per kWp a year puts a 270 kWp array at around 216,800 kWh, on roughly 802 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 Hexham?

Less is wasted than governors expect, but the figure is worth seeing: 26.4 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 Hexham?

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 Northumberland?

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 Northumberland. We confirm it either way.

How many schools are there around Hexham?

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

• School roofs in Blyth
• School roofs in Cramlington
• School roofs in Morpeth
• School roofs in Berwick-upon-Tweed
• School roofs in Alnwick
• School roofs in Bishop Auckland

All Northumberland locations