Specialist solar panels for schools in Mansfield
The Samworth Church Academy, Sherwood Hall Road sits on the planning record near Mansfield at 320 kWp, which makes the question here less whether a school roof works and more what yours would carry. We start with the roof build up and the age of the covering, because across a school estate that is usually what decides which block goes first.
26.1% of the modelled year lands in July and August, on a roof that returns 852 kWh per kWp a year. The worked example below runs at 320 kWp, the median size schools around Mansfield have applied for. Source: EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss.
Book a roof survey in Mansfield- 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.
Which schools around NG18 have applied
The Renewable Energy Planning Database records 1 school and college solar scheme in the NG18 postcode district. A secondary school, The Samworth Church Academy, Sherwood Hall Road, applied for 320 kWp roof mounted and the scheme holds consent and is awaiting construction. The applicant on record is eEnergy Group PLC.
None of these are ours. They are entries in the public planning record, reproduced here because a consented array at a school down the road is a better guide to your own prospects than any national average. Source: Renewable Energy Planning Database, Q1 2026.
One thing to be clear about: the drawing at the head of this page is an illustrative estate, not The Samworth Church Academy, Sherwood Hall Road and not a survey of anyone's roof. What we know about the scheme above is only what the public planning record says.
The median array applied for here is 320 kWp. At 320 kWp you are covering roughly 950 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Samworth Church Academy, Sherwood Hall Road | eEnergy Group PLC | 320 kWp | Roof | Awaiting Construction |
Solar for education buildings across Nottinghamshire
A one kilowatt-peak array on a shallow pitched roof in Mansfield models at 852 kWh a year, from modelled irradiation of 1,087 kWh per square metre in the plane of the array (EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss). Mansfield 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 320 kWp array, sized to the median array applied for at schools around Mansfield itself, models at about 272,600 kWh a year before shading, and needs roughly 950 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 71,100 kWh landing in July and August and roughly 12,800 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.
Mansfield ranks 6 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.
Term dates against the Mansfield generation curve
A Mansfield school roof generates most in the weeks its buildings are closed. 26.1 percent of the modelled year lands in July and August alone (EU PVGIS v5.2), and the summer holiday takes roughly six of those nine weeks out of the timetable. May is the strongest single month here at 14 percent of the annual total, which is still term time, and that works slightly in your favour against towns whose curve peaks in July.
Winter reverses it. December and January between them return 4.7 percent of the modelled year, and that is when the heating, the lighting and a full register are all drawing at the same time. The roof makes 6.3 times as much in May 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.
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.
Then there is the afternoon. From roughly three o'clock the building empties while the roof is still working, so a system sized on annual consumption will over-generate in exactly the hours nobody is there. We size on half hourly data for that reason.
None of that makes a Mansfield 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 National Grid Electricity Distribution, 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.
- 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 | 21 | 14 | 7 |
| Feb | 15 | 36 | 19 | 17 |
| Mar | 21 | 70 | 47 | 23 |
| Apr | 12 | 99 | 40 | 59 |
| May | 17 | 119 | 65 | 54 |
| Jun | 21 | 114 | 80 | 34 |
| Jul | 11 | 118 | 42 | 76 |
| Aug | 0 | 104 | 0 | 104 |
| Sep | 20 | 78 | 52 | 26 |
| Oct | 17 | 47 | 26 | 21 |
| Nov | 21 | 27 | 19 | 8 |
| Dec | 15 | 19 | 9 | 10 |
| Year | 190 | 852 | 413 | 439 |
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).
Mansfield schools, phase by phase
Mansfield has 46 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register teaching 17,574 pupils between them. Source: DfE Get Information About Schools.
The split is 34 primary, 7 secondary, 4 special and 1 further education, at an average of 382 pupils a site. At 4.9 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 Mansfield, 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.
Book a roof survey at your Mansfield school
Lenzie Consulting Ltd arranges roof surveys for schools across Nottinghamshire. Send the school postcode and a rough idea of the roof area, and the last twelve months of half hourly meter data if the school holds it. We come back with what the roofs can carry, what they would generate against your own consumption, and the funding routes open to a school.
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.
Mansfield school solar, answered
- Is there enough sun around Mansfield for this to be worth doing?
- The model gives 852 kWh a year for every kWp installed at this latitude, so a 320 kWp array comes out at roughly 272,600 kWh a year before shading. It needs about 950 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 Mansfield school waste its generation in August?
- 26.1 percent of the modelled annual output for Mansfield 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 National Grid Electricity Distribution. We model all three against your half hourly data before an array is sized.
- Will the network around Mansfield accept the export?
- National Grid Electricity Distribution is the distribution network operator for Nottinghamshire. 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 Mansfield?
- Usually permitted development covers a roof array on a school, with prior approval from Mansfield 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 NG18 already done this?
- One school scheme is on record in this postcode district, including a 320 kWp array at The Samworth Church Academy, Sherwood Hall Road 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 Mansfield?
- Mansfield has 46 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register, with 17,574 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.