Specialist solar panels for schools in Wells
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.
134,900 kWh a year, modelled for a 150 kWp array on roughly 446 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 Wells- 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 Somerset
A one kilowatt-peak array on a shallow pitched roof in Wells models at 899 kWh a year, from modelled irradiation of 1,149 kWh per square metre in the plane of the array (EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss). That puts Wells 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 150 kWp array, sized to what the nearest school scheme on record applied for, 15 miles away at Keynsham, models at about 134,900 kWh a year before shading, and needs roughly 446 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 33,900 kWh landing in July and August and roughly 6,700 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.
Wells ranks 7 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.
School solar on record near BA5
Search the Renewable Energy Planning Database for the BA5 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 15 miles out and there is one: Wellsway School, Chandag Road in Keynsham, 150 kWp, applied for by Bath & West Community Energy, 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 Wells generation curve
A Wells school roof generates most in the weeks its buildings are closed. 25.1 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 13.8 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 6.2 times as much in July as it does in December, and August alone outproduces December by about 5.1 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.
The weekly pattern repeats the annual one. Saturdays and Sundays generate as well as any other day and consume almost nothing, so before storage or export is even discussed it is worth knowing what the site does at a weekend, which only half hourly data will tell you.
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 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 | 25 | 16 | 9 |
| Feb | 15 | 40 | 21 | 19 |
| Mar | 21 | 75 | 51 | 24 |
| Apr | 12 | 107 | 43 | 64 |
| May | 17 | 122 | 67 | 55 |
| Jun | 21 | 123 | 86 | 37 |
| Jul | 11 | 124 | 44 | 80 |
| Aug | 0 | 102 | 0 | 102 |
| Sep | 20 | 81 | 54 | 27 |
| Oct | 17 | 50 | 27 | 23 |
| Nov | 21 | 30 | 21 | 9 |
| Dec | 15 | 20 | 10 | 10 |
| Year | 190 | 899 | 440 | 459 |
Grid connection through National Grid Electricity Distribution
National Grid Electricity Distribution 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 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.
Book a roof survey at your Wells school
We survey school and college roofs throughout Somerset. 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.
Wells school solar, answered
- Is there enough sun around Wells for this to be worth doing?
- The model gives 899 kWh a year for every kWp installed at this latitude, so a 150 kWp array comes out at roughly 134,900 kWh a year before shading. It needs about 446 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 Wells school waste its generation in August?
- 25.1 percent of the modelled annual output for Wells 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 National Grid Electricity Distribution. We model all three against your half hourly data before an array is sized.
- Will the network around Wells accept the export?
- National Grid Electricity Distribution is the distribution network operator for Somerset. 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 Wells?
- Usually permitted development covers a roof array on a school, with prior approval from Mendip 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 Wells?
- 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.