How much would a school roof near Taunton generate?

Modelled at 911 kWh per kWp a year, a 320 kWp array on a Taunton school models at about 291,500 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 Taunton?

It goes somewhere, just not into the timetable. 25.2 percent of the Taunton 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 Taunton school?

Applications go to National Grid Electricity Distribution, who run the network across Somerset. 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 Somerset West and Taunton 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 Somerset West and Taunton on siting and design. Listed buildings and conservation areas are the usual exceptions. We put the position to Somerset West and Taunton before a design is finalised.

How many schools are there around Taunton?

Somerset has 266 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register, with 68,648 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 Taunton

Somerset has 266 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.

911 kWh per kWp a year at this latitude, so a 320 kWp array, the size applied for at the nearest school scheme on record, models at about 291,500 kWh. Source: EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss.

Book a roof survey in Taunton

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

Drawing Typical school site, Taunton scale

Blocks 4, 3 with array

Array about 345 kWp

Yield about 314,000 kWh/yr

Frontage about 90 m / Rev A / TA1

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.

Taunton / Somerset

A school on the edge of a South West market town, solar arrays on its roofs and rolling farmland beyond — School buildings of the kind we survey across South West. Not a named school and not our work.

Solar for education buildings across Somerset

A one kilowatt-peak array on a shallow pitched roof in Taunton models at 911 kWh a year, from modelled irradiation of 1,163 kWh per square metre in the plane of the array (EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss). Taunton models 3 percent above our mean. That is a real advantage, though a smaller one than the difference between an array matched to the timetable and one matched to the roof.

Scaled up, a 320 kWp array, sized to what the nearest school scheme on record applied for, 23 miles away at Weston-super-Mare, models at about 291,500 kWh a year before shading, and needs roughly 950 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 73,500 kWh landing in July and August and roughly 14,600 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.

FIG. 1 Taunton against the rest of Somerset

Weston-super-Mare934
Bridgwater931
Yeovil923
Glastonbury913
Taunton911
Bath904
Wells899
Frome894

Taunton ranks 5 of 8 towns we cover in Somerset on modelled yield, against a national mean of 886 kWh per kWp. The county runs from 894 to 934, a spread of 40 kWh per kWp. Within Somerset 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 TA1

Search the Renewable Energy Planning Database for the TA1 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.

Look 23 miles out and there is one: Weston College in Weston-super-Mare, 300 kWp, applied for by Weston 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 Taunton generation curve

A Taunton school roof generates most in the weeks its buildings are closed. 25.2 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. July is the single strongest month here at 13.7 percent of the annual total, and it falls almost entirely inside the holiday.

Winter reverses it. December and January between them return 5 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 times as much in July 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.

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.

And the week has the same hole in it. Two days in seven the site is closed altogether, at no cost to the generation, which is part of why the session day share sits where it does. Weekend lettings are the one lever a Taunton school has over that, and they are worth counting properly.

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 National Grid Electricity Distribution 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.

FIG. 2 A Taunton 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 Taunton, 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	41	22	19
Mar	21	75	51	24
Apr	12	107	43	64
May	17	124	68	56
Jun	21	124	87	37
Jul	11	125	44	81
Aug	0	105	0	105
Sep	20	84	56	28
Oct	17	51	28	23
Nov	21	30	21	9
Dec	15	21	10	11
Year	190	912	446	466

Output per kWp installed, split by whether the day is a session day. July and August are 25.2 percent of the Taunton year and the school is shut for most of them. Each month's total is spread evenly across its days, which is the only split available without half hourly readings. 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 National Grid Electricity Distribution

Connections around Taunton 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 Somerset the planning database records 223 solar schemes totalling 1574 MW, of which 79 are operational (REPD Q1 2026).

Somerset schools, phase by phase

Somerset has 266 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register teaching 68,648 pupils between them. Source: DfE Get Information About Schools.

The split is 219 primary, 35 secondary, 9 special and 3 further education, at an average of 258 pupils a site. 6.3 primaries per secondary is a mix weighted towards small sites. The roof area, and therefore most of the generation, sits with the 35 secondaries and the 3 further education sites.

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.

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 Taunton school

A survey in Taunton 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 Taunton 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.

Taunton school solar, answered

How much would a school roof near Taunton generate?: Modelled at 911 kWh per kWp a year, a 320 kWp array on a Taunton school models at about 291,500 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 Taunton?: It goes somewhere, just not into the timetable. 25.2 percent of the Taunton 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 Taunton school?: Applications go to National Grid Electricity Distribution, who run the network across Somerset. 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 Somerset West and Taunton 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 Somerset West and Taunton on siting and design. Listed buildings and conservation areas are the usual exceptions. We put the position to Somerset West and Taunton before a design is finalised.
How many schools are there around Taunton?: Somerset has 266 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register, with 68,648 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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