Specialist solar panels for schools in Oswestry
What decides a solar scheme at a Oswestry school is how much of the output the site uses itself, not how much the roof makes. We arrange the roof survey, model the output against the school's own half hourly consumption, and set out the funding routes.
136,800 kWh a year, modelled for a 160 kWp array on roughly 475 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 Oswestry- 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 Oswestry models at 855 kWh a year, from modelled irradiation of 1,092 kWh per square metre in the plane of the array (EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss). That is about 3 percent below the mean across the towns we cover, which is a smaller gap than most schools expect and smaller than the gap between a well matched and a badly matched system.
Scaled up, a 160 kWp array, sized to what the nearest school scheme on record applied for, 39 miles away at Stoke-on-Trent, models at about 136,800 kWh a year before shading, and needs roughly 475 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 34,900 kWh landing in July and August and roughly 6,300 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.
Oswestry ranks 3 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 SY11
The Renewable Energy Planning Database holds no school scheme for the SY11 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 39 miles out and there is one: Ormiston Meridian Academy, Sandon Road in Stoke-on-Trent, 160 kWp, applied for by EEnergy Group plc, which is with the planning authority. 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 Oswestry generation curve
A Oswestry 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. May is the strongest single month here at 14.1 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 4.6 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 6.7 times as much in May as it does in December, and August alone outproduces December by about 5.6 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.
Nationally this comes out at about 49 percent of annual generation falling on a session day. A business open every weekday sees roughly 71 percent. The 22 point gap is what a school appraisal has to absorb, and it is much the same in Oswestry as anywhere else.
Daily shape compounds it. A school's load climbs from breakfast club, holds through the teaching day and falls away from about three in the afternoon, while generation is still strong until six in high summer. That is why we size against half hourly meter data rather than against annual consumption: the annual figure hides both problems.
The conclusion is not that a Oswestry school should do nothing. It is that the array should be sized to the load that survives the holidays, which is usually the server room, the catering refrigeration, the ventilation and the hot water, plus whatever the site lets out over the summer. Anything above that line needs storage or an export agreement with National Grid Electricity Distribution to earn its keep.
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 | 37 | 20 | 17 |
| Mar | 21 | 69 | 47 | 22 |
| Apr | 12 | 101 | 40 | 61 |
| May | 17 | 120 | 66 | 54 |
| Jun | 21 | 119 | 83 | 36 |
| Jul | 11 | 118 | 42 | 76 |
| Aug | 0 | 100 | 0 | 100 |
| Sep | 20 | 78 | 52 | 26 |
| Oct | 17 | 47 | 26 | 21 |
| Nov | 21 | 26 | 18 | 8 |
| Dec | 15 | 18 | 9 | 9 |
| Year | 190 | 854 | 417 | 437 |
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. That is 6.4 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.
Grid connection through National Grid Electricity Distribution
Connections around Oswestry 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).
Book a roof survey at your Oswestry school
The first survey answers three questions at once: what the roofs carry, what they generate against your own timetable, and how a Oswestry school pays for it. Send the postcode, an approximate roof area per block and half hourly meter data if the school can get it from its supplier.
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.
Oswestry school solar, answered
- What would a 160 kWp array produce at a Oswestry school?
- Yes, and the figure matters more than the sunshine. 855 kWh per kWp a year puts a 160 kWp array at around 136,800 kWh, on roughly 475 square metres of roof. The value of that depends on your term time load. Source: EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss.
- What happens to the electricity during the summer holidays in Oswestry?
- Less is wasted than governors expect, but the figure is worth seeing: 25.5 percent of the year is modelled to arrive in July and August here (EU PVGIS v5.2), against a site running on holiday base load. Lettings, holiday clubs and summer works take some of it, storage takes more, and the rest is an export question for National Grid Electricity Distribution.
- Who do we apply to for export near Oswestry?
- Only National Grid Electricity Distribution can answer it for your connection. What we can say is that a capped export limit rarely breaks a school scheme, because the array that suits a school is sized to the term time load rather than to the roof.
- Do we need planning permission in Shropshire?
- Often not, because panels on the roof of a school building usually sit within permitted development for non-domestic buildings. The exceptions are listed buildings, conservation areas and arrays that project too far above the roof plane, and larger schemes still need prior approval from Shropshire. We confirm it either way.
- How many schools are there around Oswestry?
- 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.