Specialist solar panels for schools in Thame
Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks runs the network around Thame, 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.
891 kWh per kWp a year at this latitude, so a 540 kWp array, the size applied for at the nearest school scheme on record, models at about 481,100 kWh. Source: EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss.
Book a roof survey in Thame- 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 Oxfordshire
A one kilowatt-peak array on a shallow pitched roof in Thame models at 891 kWh a year, from modelled irradiation of 1,142 kWh per square metre in the plane of the array (EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss). That puts Thame in the middle of the national range, close enough to our mean of 886 kWh per kWp that the interesting question moves straight to consumption.
Scaled up, a 540 kWp array, sized to what the nearest school scheme on record applied for, 9 miles away at Aylesbury, models at about 481,100 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 122,700 kWh landing in July and August and roughly 23,600 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.
Thame ranks 8 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.
What the planning record shows around Thame
Search the Renewable Energy Planning Database for the OX9 postcode district and nothing comes back under education. That is worth stating plainly and then setting aside: the register is built around generating stations, a school array is a fraction of the size it captures reliably, and plenty of school roofs never appear in any national record at all.
The nearest education scheme on the record is 9 miles from Thame, at Aylesbury: 540 kWp at Aylesbury College Decarbonisation, applicant Aylesbury College, which holds consent and is awaiting construction. That is someone else's application, not ours, and it is here because it shows what Buckinghamshire planning has already accepted at an education site. Source: Renewable Energy Planning Database, Q1 2026.
The summer holiday problem for a Thame school
25.5 percent of the annual output modelled for Thame 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. 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.
The inverse holds at the other end. December and January together return only 4.9 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 June as it does in December, and August alone outproduces December by about 5.2 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.
Inside the day it happens again. The roof is still at three quarters of its peak at four in the afternoon, by which time a Thame school is largely empty, so the hours that look best on a generation chart are the worst on a consumption one.
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 Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks pays for the surplus that is left.
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.
- 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 | 24 | 15 | 9 |
| Feb | 15 | 38 | 20 | 18 |
| Mar | 21 | 73 | 49 | 24 |
| Apr | 12 | 104 | 42 | 62 |
| May | 17 | 119 | 65 | 54 |
| Jun | 21 | 124 | 87 | 37 |
| Jul | 11 | 124 | 44 | 80 |
| Aug | 0 | 103 | 0 | 103 |
| Sep | 20 | 82 | 55 | 27 |
| Oct | 17 | 51 | 28 | 23 |
| Nov | 21 | 29 | 20 | 9 |
| Dec | 15 | 20 | 10 | 10 |
| Year | 190 | 891 | 435 | 456 |
Grid connection through Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks
Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks 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 Oxfordshire the planning database records 149 solar schemes totalling 2544 MW, of which 31 are operational (REPD Q1 2026).
How many schools South Oxfordshire has
South Oxfordshire has 73 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register teaching 23,161 pupils between them. Source: DfE Get Information About Schools.
The split is 59 primary, 10 secondary, 3 special and 1 further education, at an average of 317 pupils a site. 5.9 primaries per secondary is a mix weighted towards small sites. The roof area, and therefore most of the generation, sits with the 10 secondaries and the 1 further education site.
Across an estate of that size the roofs will not be in the same condition, and that is the point of surveying them together: the block with the best orientation is often not the block whose covering has twenty years left in it.
Start with the Thame roof
Roof condition decides the order of works on most school estates, so that is where we start. Send us the postcode and a rough roof area, with twelve months of half hourly readings if you have them, and we come back with usable area, modelled output against your own load, and the funding routes.
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 Thame schools
- Is there enough sun around Thame for this to be worth doing?
- The model gives 891 kWh a year for every kWp installed at this latitude, so a 540 kWp array comes out at roughly 481,100 kWh a year before shading. It needs about 1,604 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 Thame school waste its generation in August?
- 25.5 percent of the modelled annual output for Thame 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 Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks. We model all three against your half hourly data before an array is sized.
- Will the network around Thame accept the export?
- Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks is the distribution network operator for Oxfordshire. 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 Thame?
- Usually permitted development covers a roof array on a school, with prior approval from South Oxfordshire 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.
- How many schools are there around Thame?
- South Oxfordshire has 73 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register, with 23,161 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.