Solar panels for schools across Somerset

The school estate in Somerset

Somerset has 582 open state-funded schools and colleges teaching 171,561 pupils, spread across 4 local authorities. Source: DfE Get Information About Schools.

Of those, 465 primary, 89 secondary, 22 special and 6 further education. The phase mix is what sets the usable roof area across a county: secondary sites and colleges carry the sports halls, dining blocks and flat roofs, while primaries offer a hall and a teaching block each and suit arrays sized to the base load.

Solar for education buildings and what a Somerset roof models

Modelled yield is not flat across Somerset. Weston-super-Mare comes out at 934 kWh per kWp a year against 894 at Frome, a spread of 40 kWh per kWp. On a 310 kWp school array that difference is about 12,400 kWh a year, which is worth checking before anyone accepts a county-wide saving figure. Source: EU PVGIS v5.2.

Every town page below carries the same arithmetic for that town, including the share of the year that lands in July and August, which is the number a governing body should see before a saving figure.

Solar PV for academy trusts on the Somerset planning record

The Renewable Energy Planning Database records 2 school and college solar schemes in Somerset, all of them at Weston-super-Mare. They include Weston College at Weston-super-Mare. The median array applied for is 310 kWp.

We were not involved in any of those schemes. They are public planning records, and they are here because what a local authority and a network operator have already accepted for one school is the best available guide to what they will accept for the next. Source: Renewable Energy Planning Database, Q1 2026.

Connections across the county run through National Grid Electricity Distribution. Anything above 3.68 kW per phase needs a G99 application, and on a school site the incoming supply and the size of the existing main switchboard are often the real constraint rather than the roof.