Specialist solar panels for schools in Worksop
National Grid Electricity Distribution runs the network around Worksop, and on a school site their answer on export shapes the design as much as the roof pitch does. 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.
269,400 kWh a year, modelled for a 320 kWp array on roughly 950 sqm of clear roof. That is the size applied for at the nearest school scheme on record. Source: EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss.
Book a roof survey in Worksop- 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.
School rooftop solar across Nottinghamshire
A one kilowatt-peak array on a shallow pitched roof in Worksop models at 842 kWh a year, from modelled irradiation of 1,075 kWh per square metre in the plane of the array (EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss). 5 percent below our mean puts Worksop 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 320 kWp array, sized to what the nearest school scheme on record applied for, 12 miles away at Mansfield, models at about 269,400 kWh a year before shading, and needs roughly 950 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 70,000 kWh landing in July and August and roughly 12,900 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.
Worksop ranks 7 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.
What the planning record shows around Worksop
There is no school entry for the S80 postcode district in the Renewable Energy Planning Database. The register is dependable for anything from a megawatt upward and incomplete below it, and a school array is usually nearer a fifth of a megawatt, so this says more about the threshold than about Worksop.
The nearest education scheme on the record is 12 miles from Worksop, at Mansfield: 320 kWp at The Samworth Church Academy, Sherwood Hall Road, applicant eEnergy Group PLC, which holds consent and is awaiting construction. That is someone else's application, not ours, and it is here because it shows what Nottinghamshire planning has already accepted at an education site. Source: Renewable Energy Planning Database, Q1 2026.
The summer holiday problem for a Worksop school
26 percent of the annual output modelled for Worksop 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 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 4.8 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 6.2 times as much in May as it does in December, and August alone outproduces December by about 5.4 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.
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.
The weekly pattern repeats the annual one. Saturdays and Sundays generate as well as any other day and consume almost nothing, so before storage or export is even discussed it is worth knowing what the site does at a weekend, which only half hourly data will tell you.
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 National Grid Electricity Distribution 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.
- 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 | 68 | 46 | 22 |
| Apr | 12 | 97 | 39 | 58 |
| May | 17 | 118 | 65 | 53 |
| Jun | 21 | 113 | 79 | 34 |
| Jul | 11 | 117 | 42 | 75 |
| Aug | 0 | 102 | 0 | 102 |
| Sep | 20 | 77 | 51 | 26 |
| Oct | 17 | 46 | 25 | 21 |
| Nov | 21 | 27 | 19 | 8 |
| Dec | 15 | 19 | 9 | 10 |
| Year | 190 | 841 | 408 | 433 |
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).
How many schools Bassetlaw has
Bassetlaw has 57 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register teaching 18,033 pupils between them. Source: DfE Get Information About Schools.
The split is 50 primary, 6 secondary and 1 special, at an average of 316 pupils a site. A ratio of 8.3 to one tells you where the roof area is. It is not with the 50 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.
Start with the Worksop roof
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.
Questions governors ask us about Worksop schools
- How much would a school roof near Worksop generate?
- Modelled at 842 kWh per kWp a year, a 320 kWp array on a Worksop school models at about 269,400 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 Worksop?
- It goes somewhere, just not into the timetable. 26 percent of the Worksop 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 Worksop 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 Bassetlaw 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 Bassetlaw on siting and design. Listed buildings and conservation areas are the usual exceptions. We put the position to Bassetlaw before a design is finalised.
- How many schools are there around Worksop?
- Bassetlaw has 57 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register, with 18,033 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.