How much would a school roof near Arnold generate?

Modelled at 857 kWh per kWp a year, a 180 kWp array on a Arnold school models at about 154,300 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 Arnold?

It goes somewhere, just not into the timetable. 26 percent of the Arnold 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 National Grid Electricity Distribution, or a sign the array is too big. We test which before sizing anything.

Which network operator handles the connection at a Arnold school?

Applications go to National Grid Electricity Distribution, who run the network across Nottinghamshire. 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 Nottingham 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 Nottingham on siting and design. Listed buildings and conservation areas are the usual exceptions. We put the position to Nottingham before a design is finalised.

Has a school near NG5 already done this?

One school scheme is on record in this postcode district, including a 180 kWp array at Arnold Hill Spencer Academy 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 Arnold?

Gedling has 53 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register, with 19,042 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 Arnold

A 180 kWp array at Arnold Hill Spencer Academy is the nearest school scheme on the planning record, and it holds consent and is awaiting construction. The survey records sheet type, remaining life, purlin spacing and the state of the incoming supply, and the model runs off your own meter data rather than an average.

857 kWh per kWp a year at this latitude, so a 180 kWp array, the median size schools around Arnold have applied for, models at about 154,300 kWh. Source: EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss.

Book a roof survey in Arnold

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

Drawing Typical school site, Arnold scale

Blocks 4, 3 with array

Array about 345 kWp

Yield about 296,000 kWh/yr

Frontage about 90 m / Rev A / NG5

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.

Arnold / Nottinghamshire

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

School solar consented near Arnold

The Renewable Energy Planning Database records 1 school and college solar scheme in the NG5 postcode district. Arnold Hill Spencer Academy is down for a 180 kWp roof mounted array and the application holds consent and is awaiting construction. The applicant on record is Green Nation Solar Energy.

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 Arnold Hill Spencer Academy or as any other Arnold site. Our knowledge of these applications comes entirely from the public record.

The median array applied for here is 180 kWp. At 180 kWp you are covering roughly 535 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
Arnold Hill Spencer Academy	Green Nation Solar Energy	180 kWp	Roof	Awaiting Construction

Solar PV for academy trusts across Nottinghamshire

A one kilowatt-peak array on a shallow pitched roof in Arnold models at 857 kWh a year, from modelled irradiation of 1,095 kWh per square metre in the plane of the array (EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss). That is about 3 percent below the mean across the towns we cover, which is a smaller gap than most schools expect and smaller than the gap between a well matched and a badly matched system.

Scaled up, a 180 kWp array, sized to the median array applied for at schools around Arnold itself, models at about 154,300 kWh a year before shading, and needs roughly 535 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 40,100 kWh landing in July and August and roughly 7,400 kWh across December and January. National Grid Electricity Distribution 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 Arnold against the rest of Nottinghamshire

Newark874
Retford869
West Bridgford864
Nottingham859
Arnold857
Mansfield852
Worksop842

Arnold ranks 5 of 7 towns we cover in Nottinghamshire on modelled yield, against a national mean of 886 kWh per kWp. The county runs from 842 to 874, a spread of 32 kWh per kWp. Within Nottinghamshire that difference is small enough to ignore: where the building sits is not what decides this scheme, your consumption pattern is.

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 Arnold falls as the roof peaks

The generating year and the school year are out of step in Arnold. July and August carry 26 percent of the modelled output (EU PVGIS v5.2), and the site is closed for most of those nine weeks. July is the single strongest month here at 13.9 percent of the annual total, and it falls almost entirely inside the holiday.

At the other end of the year the mismatch flips. Only 4.8 percent of output falls in December and January, the two months when a Arnold school is fully occupied and its heating and lighting are at their heaviest. The roof makes 6.3 times as much in July as it does in December, and August alone outproduces December by about 5.5 to one. 74 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.

Nationally this comes out at about 49 percent of annual generation falling on a session day. A business open every weekday sees roughly 71 percent. The 22 point gap is what a school appraisal has to absorb, and it is much the same in Arnold as anywhere else.

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 Arnold school has over that, and they are worth counting properly.

The conclusion is not that a Arnold school should do nothing. It is that the array should be sized to the load that survives the holidays, which is usually the server room, the catering refrigeration, the ventilation and the hot water, plus whatever the site lets out over the summer. Anything above that line needs storage or an export agreement with National Grid Electricity Distribution to earn its keep.

We set out the complete version of the term time arithmetic on the home page, and what it does to a payback figure under costs.

FIG. 2 A Arnold 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 Arnold, 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	22	14	8
Feb	15	37	20	17
Mar	21	70	47	23
Apr	12	100	40	60
May	17	118	65	53
Jun	21	114	80	34
Jul	11	119	42	77
Aug	0	104	0	104
Sep	20	78	52	26
Oct	17	48	26	22
Nov	21	28	20	8
Dec	15	19	9	10
Year	190	857	415	442

Output per kWp installed, split by whether the day is a session day. July and August are 26 percent of the Arnold year and the school is shut for most of them. Each month's total is spread evenly across its days, which is the only split available without half hourly readings. 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

The school estate in Gedling

Gedling has 53 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register teaching 19,042 pupils between them. Source: DfE Get Information About Schools.

The split is 44 primary, 7 secondary and 2 special, at an average of 359 pupils a site. That is 6.3 primaries for every secondary, which is the ratio that matters for a roof: a primary of a few hundred pupils usually offers a hall roof and one teaching block, while a secondary site carries a sports hall, a dining block and several flat roofs.

If your trust holds several of them, the sequencing question comes before the sizing question. Roof age, covering type and the state of the incoming supply vary block by block across an estate, and that is normally what sets the order of works.

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.

Grid connection through National Grid Electricity Distribution

National Grid Electricity Distribution operates the distribution network across Nottinghamshire, 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 Nottinghamshire the planning database records 164 solar schemes totalling 3700 MW, of which 35 are operational (REPD Q1 2026).

Book the survey

Send us the school postcode

The first survey answers three questions at once: what the roofs carry, what they generate against your own timetable, and how a Arnold 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.

What Arnold trusts ask before a survey

How much would a school roof near Arnold generate?: Modelled at 857 kWh per kWp a year, a 180 kWp array on a Arnold school models at about 154,300 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 Arnold?: It goes somewhere, just not into the timetable. 26 percent of the Arnold 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 National Grid Electricity Distribution, or a sign the array is too big. We test which before sizing anything.
Which network operator handles the connection at a Arnold school?: Applications go to National Grid Electricity Distribution, who run the network across Nottinghamshire. 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 Nottingham 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 Nottingham on siting and design. Listed buildings and conservation areas are the usual exceptions. We put the position to Nottingham before a design is finalised.
Has a school near NG5 already done this?: One school scheme is on record in this postcode district, including a 180 kWp array at Arnold Hill Spencer Academy 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 Arnold?: Gedling has 53 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register, with 19,042 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.

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