Specialist solar panels for schools in Ludlow
Shropshire has 151 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.
240,800 kWh a year, modelled for a 280 kWp array on roughly 832 sqm of clear roof. That is the median size on the national planning record. Source: EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss.
Book a roof survey in Ludlow- 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.
Solar for education buildings across Shropshire
A one kilowatt-peak array on a shallow pitched roof in Ludlow models at 860 kWh a year, from modelled irradiation of 1,101 kWh per square metre in the plane of the array (EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss). Ludlow sits 3 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 280 kWp array, sized to the median array applied for at schools on the national planning record, models at about 240,800 kWh a year before shading, and needs roughly 832 square metres of clear roof. We use the national median from the planning record rather than a round number, so the example stays anchored to what schools have applied for.
Spread across the year that is about 61,400 kWh landing in July and August and roughly 11,600 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.
Ludlow ranks 1 of 5 towns we cover in Shropshire on modelled yield, against a national mean of 886 kWh per kWp. The county runs from 842 to 860, a spread of 18 kWh per kWp. Within Shropshire that difference is small enough to ignore: where the building sits is not what decides this scheme, your consumption pattern is.
School solar on record near SY8
No school or college solar scheme appears in the SY8 postcode district in the Renewable Energy Planning Database. That is a reporting threshold rather than a verdict. The database records generating stations from one megawatt upward reliably and smaller ones patchily, and almost every school array is a fraction of that, so a roof full of panels on a Ludlow secondary could be generating today without ever reaching it.
Look 37 miles out and there is one: Eden Boys Leadership Academy, Alum Rock Road in Birmingham, 0 kWp, applied for by Star Academies, 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 Ludlow generation curve
A Ludlow 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 13.8 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 4.8 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 June as it does in December, and August alone outproduces December by about 5.3 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.
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 Ludlow school is largely empty, so the hours that look best on a generation chart are the worst on a consumption one.
None of that makes a Ludlow 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 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 | 22 | 14 | 8 |
| Feb | 15 | 37 | 20 | 17 |
| Mar | 21 | 71 | 48 | 23 |
| Apr | 12 | 102 | 41 | 61 |
| May | 17 | 118 | 65 | 53 |
| Jun | 21 | 119 | 83 | 36 |
| Jul | 11 | 119 | 42 | 77 |
| Aug | 0 | 100 | 0 | 100 |
| Sep | 20 | 78 | 52 | 26 |
| Oct | 17 | 48 | 26 | 22 |
| Nov | 21 | 27 | 19 | 8 |
| Dec | 15 | 19 | 9 | 10 |
| Year | 190 | 860 | 419 | 441 |
Grid connection through National Grid Electricity Distribution
Connections around Ludlow are handled by National Grid Electricity Distribution, 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 Shropshire the planning database records 110 solar schemes totalling 813 MW, of which 27 are operational (REPD Q1 2026).
Shropshire schools, phase by phase
Shropshire has 151 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register teaching 39,029 pupils between them. Source: DfE Get Information About Schools.
The split is 127 primary, 20 secondary, 3 special and 1 further education, at an average of 258 pupils a site. Read 6.4 primaries per secondary as a sequencing hint rather than a statistic. A primary is a single survey visit and a modest array; a secondary is several roofs of different ages on one site, and that is where both the area and the complications are.
A trust holding more than one of these sites should look at them together. Grouping the surveys turns the grid question, the funding question and the procurement route into one exercise rather than four, and it usually changes which roof goes first.
Book a roof survey at your Ludlow school
We survey school and college roofs throughout Shropshire. We need the postcode, a rough roof area and your half hourly meter data if the trust has it. From that we model what the roof carries, what it generates against the timetable, and which of the funding routes actually suits a school of your size.
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.
Ludlow school solar, answered
- How much would a school roof near Ludlow generate?
- Modelled at 860 kWh per kWp a year, a 280 kWp array on a Ludlow school models at about 240,800 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 Ludlow?
- It goes somewhere, just not into the timetable. 25.5 percent of the Ludlow 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 Ludlow school?
- Applications go to National Grid Electricity Distribution, who run the network across Shropshire. 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 Shropshire 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 Shropshire on siting and design. Listed buildings and conservation areas are the usual exceptions. We put the position to Shropshire before a design is finalised.
- How many schools are there around Ludlow?
- Shropshire has 151 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register, with 39,029 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.