How much would a school roof near Bicester generate?

Modelled at 895 kWh per kWp a year, a 540 kWp array on a Bicester school models at about 483,300 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 Bicester?

It goes somewhere, just not into the timetable. 25.5 percent of the Bicester 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 Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks, or a sign the array is too big. We test which before sizing anything.

Which network operator handles the connection at a Bicester school?

Applications go to Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks, who run the network across Oxfordshire. 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 Cherwell 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 Cherwell on siting and design. Listed buildings and conservation areas are the usual exceptions. We put the position to Cherwell before a design is finalised.

How many schools are there around Bicester?

Cherwell has 66 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register, with 22,653 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 Bicester

Cherwell has 66 state-funded schools and colleges, and most of them are buying electricity in exactly the hours their own roofs could be making it. 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.

483,300 kWh a year, modelled for a 540 kWp array on roughly 1,604 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 Bicester

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

Drawing Illustrative estate, not a Bicester school

Blocks 4, 3 with array

Array about 345 kWp

Yield about 309,000 kWh/yr

Frontage about 90 m / Rev A / OX26

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.

Bicester / Oxfordshire

A school on the edge of a Home Counties town, solar arrays on its roofs and wooded low hills beyond — School buildings of the kind we survey across South East. Not a named school and not our work.

Solar for education buildings across Oxfordshire

A one kilowatt-peak array on a shallow pitched roof in Bicester models at 895 kWh a year, from modelled irradiation of 1,149 kWh per square metre in the plane of the array (EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss). That is within a few percent of our mean. Latitude is not the variable here. When the building is occupied is.

Scaled up, a 540 kWp array, sized to what the nearest school scheme on record applied for, 16 miles away at Aylesbury, models at about 483,300 kWh a year before shading, and needs roughly 1,604 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 123,200 kWh landing in July and August and roughly 24,600 kWh across December and January. Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks 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 Bicester against the rest of Oxfordshire

Didcot913
Abingdon904
Witney902
Henley-on-Thames899
Oxford895
Bicester895
Banbury891
Thame891

Bicester ranks 6 of 8 towns we cover in Oxfordshire on modelled yield, against a national mean of 886 kWh per kWp. The county runs from 891 to 913, a spread of 22 kWh per kWp. Within Oxfordshire 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

School solar on record near OX26

The Renewable Energy Planning Database holds no school scheme for the OX26 postcode district. Read that as a gap in the record, not a gap in the roofs: the database is reliable above one megawatt and thin below it, and a school array is typically a fifth of a megawatt.

Look 16 miles out and there is one: Aylesbury College Decarbonisation in Aylesbury, 540 kWp, applied for by Aylesbury College, which holds consent and is awaiting construction. None of our doing. It is a public planning record, and the nearest evidence available of how an application like yours is treated around here. Source: Renewable Energy Planning Database, Q1 2026.

Term dates against the Bicester generation curve

A Bicester school roof generates most in the weeks its buildings are closed. 25.5 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. June is the strongest single month here at 13.9 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 5.1 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 5.9 times as much in June as it does in December, and August alone outproduces December by about 5 to one. 73 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.

The same mismatch repeats every day. Peak generation lands between eleven and three, the timetable ends shortly after, and by four the site is down to caretaking and cleaning. An annual consumption figure cannot show that, which is why we ask for the half hourly data instead.

None of that makes a Bicester 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 Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks, or a smaller array that consumes nearly everything it makes.

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.

FIG. 2 A Bicester 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 Bicester, split by whether the day is a school session day. Across the year 49 percent of generation lands while the school is open.
Month	Session days	Output, kWh per kWp	School open	School closed
Jan	20	25	16	9
Feb	15	39	21	18
Mar	21	72	49	23
Apr	12	103	41	62
May	17	119	65	54
Jun	21	124	87	37
Jul	11	124	44	80
Aug	0	104	0	104
Sep	20	82	55	27
Oct	17	51	28	23
Nov	21	30	21	9
Dec	15	21	10	11
Year	190	894	437	457

Per kWp installed, month by month, separating generation while the school is open from generation at a weekend or in the holidays. 73 percent of the Bicester year sits between April and September, most of which is term time; it is the tail of that period, the last week of July and all of August, that the school is not there for. The daily split is a flat apportionment of each month, not a metered one. 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 Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks

Connections around Bicester are handled by Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks, which sets the export limit for the site. Above 3.68 kW per phase the connection runs under G99, so the export limit is agreed in advance rather than assumed. Where the local network is constrained, an export-limited connection usually still makes the scheme work, because a school uses most of what the roof makes during the working day.

Across Oxfordshire the planning database records 149 solar schemes totalling 2544 MW, of which 31 are operational (REPD Q1 2026).

Cherwell schools, phase by phase

Cherwell has 66 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register teaching 22,653 pupils between them. Source: DfE Get Information About Schools.

The split is 53 primary, 10 secondary and 3 special, at an average of 343 pupils a site. That is 5.3 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.

Book the survey

Book a roof survey at your Bicester school

A survey in Bicester starts with three things from you. Give us the postcode, the approximate roof area and, if you can get it from your supplier, twelve months of half hourly readings. What comes back is a usable area figure per block, output modelled against your own load rather than an average, and the ways a Bicester school can pay for it.

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.

Bicester school solar, answered

How much would a school roof near Bicester generate?: Modelled at 895 kWh per kWp a year, a 540 kWp array on a Bicester school models at about 483,300 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 Bicester?: It goes somewhere, just not into the timetable. 25.5 percent of the Bicester 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 Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks, or a sign the array is too big. We test which before sizing anything.
Which network operator handles the connection at a Bicester school?: Applications go to Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks, who run the network across Oxfordshire. 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 Cherwell 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 Cherwell on siting and design. Listed buildings and conservation areas are the usual exceptions. We put the position to Cherwell before a design is finalised.
How many schools are there around Bicester?: Cherwell has 66 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register, with 22,653 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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