Is there enough sun around Morpeth for this to be worth doing?

The model gives 824 kWh a year for every kWp installed at this latitude, so a 270 kWp array comes out at roughly 222,500 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 Morpeth school waste its generation in August?

26.4 percent of the modelled annual output for Morpeth 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 Morpeth 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.

Is planning permission needed for panels on a school in Morpeth?

Usually permitted development covers a roof array on a school, with prior approval from Northumberland needed above a capacity threshold. A ground mounted array in the grounds is a different question and much more likely to need a full application. We check both before design sign-off.

Has a school near NE61 already done this?

One school scheme is on record in this postcode district, including a 270 kWp array at King Edward Vi School, Cottingwood Lane 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 Morpeth?

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 Morpeth

King Edward Vi School, Cottingwood Lane sits on the planning record near Morpeth at 270 kWp, which makes the question here less whether a school roof works and more what yours would carry. 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.

26.4% of the modelled year lands in July and August, on a roof that returns 824 kWh per kWp a year. The worked example below runs at 270 kWp, the median size schools around Morpeth have applied for. Source: EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss.

Book a roof survey in Morpeth

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

Drawing Illustrative Northumberland estate

Blocks 4, 3 with array

Array about 345 kWp

Yield about 284,000 kWh/yr

Frontage about 90 m / Rev A / NE61

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.

Morpeth / 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.

Schools near Morpeth already on the planning record

The Renewable Energy Planning Database records 1 school and college solar scheme in the NE61 postcode district. A 270 kWp roof mounted array at King Edward Vi School, Cottingwood Lane holds consent and is awaiting construction. The applicant on record is The Three Rivers Trust.

We had nothing to do with any of them. They are public planning records, and they are on this page because the useful question for a governing body is not whether school solar works in the abstract but whether it has been consented nearby. Source: Renewable Energy Planning Database, Q1 2026.

The site plan at the top of this page is a generic estate drawn to show scale and sequencing. It is not King Edward Vi School, Cottingwood Lane, and it is not any other building in Morpeth. We hold no drawings, roof data or consumption data for the schools named above.

The median array applied for here is 270 kWp. At 270 kWp you are covering roughly 802 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.

Site on record	Applicant on record	Size	Mounting	Status
King Edward Vi School, Cottingwood Lane	The Three Rivers Trust	270 kWp	Roof	Awaiting Construction

School rooftop solar across Northumberland

A one kilowatt-peak array on a shallow pitched roof in Morpeth models at 824 kWh a year, from modelled irradiation of 1,046 kWh per square metre in the plane of the array (EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss). 7 percent below our mean puts Morpeth 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 the median array applied for at schools around Morpeth itself, models at about 222,500 kWh a year before shading, and needs roughly 802 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 58,700 kWh landing in July and August and roughly 7,800 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 Morpeth against the rest of Northumberland

Blyth848
Alnwick840
Berwick-upon-Tweed827
Cramlington825
Morpeth824
Hexham803

Morpeth ranks 5 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

The summer holiday problem for a Morpeth school

26.4 percent of the annual output modelled for Morpeth 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 14.7 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 3.5 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 10.1 times as much in May as it does in December, and August alone outproduces December by about 8.3 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.

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

FIG. 2 A Morpeth 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 Morpeth, 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	17	11	6
Feb	15	34	18	16
Mar	21	68	46	22
Apr	12	99	40	59
May	17	121	66	55
Jun	21	115	81	35
Jul	11	118	42	76
Aug	0	100	0	100
Sep	20	75	50	25
Oct	17	43	24	19
Nov	21	23	16	7
Dec	15	12	6	6
Year	190	825	400	425

Each bar is one month's output per kWp, divided at the school gate. The May bar is 10.1 times the December one and the timetable runs the other way round. We apportion a month's generation evenly over its days, having no half hourly data for your meter. 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 is the network operator here, and their answer on export capacity shapes the design. Any commercial array above 3.68 kW per phase connects under G99 rather than G98, and the application fixes what you are allowed to push back onto the network. If the local network is tight, limiting export rarely breaks the case here: most of the generation is consumed on site while the building is working.

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. A ratio of 4.7 to one tells you where the roof area is. It is not with the 127 primaries, which mostly offer a hall and a teaching block each, but with the larger sites that were built with a sports hall and a dining block attached.

Where a multi-academy trust holds several of those sites, surveying the estate in one pass beats taking a roof at a time. The design work, the connection applications and the procurement paperwork are the same job repeated, and a trust that runs them together gets a better answer on all three.

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.

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Start with the Morpeth roof

The first survey answers three questions at once: what the roofs carry, what they generate against your own timetable, and how a Morpeth school pays for it. Send the postcode, an approximate roof area per block and half hourly meter data if the school can get it from its supplier.

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 Morpeth schools

Is there enough sun around Morpeth for this to be worth doing?: The model gives 824 kWh a year for every kWp installed at this latitude, so a 270 kWp array comes out at roughly 222,500 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 Morpeth school waste its generation in August?: 26.4 percent of the modelled annual output for Morpeth 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 Morpeth 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.
Is planning permission needed for panels on a school in Morpeth?: Usually permitted development covers a roof array on a school, with prior approval from Northumberland needed above a capacity threshold. A ground mounted array in the grounds is a different question and much more likely to need a full application. We check both before design sign-off.
Has a school near NE61 already done this?: One school scheme is on record in this postcode district, including a 270 kWp array at King Edward Vi School, Cottingwood Lane 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 Morpeth?: 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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