Specialist solar panels for schools in Weston-super-Mare
The planning record around Weston-super-Mare carries 2 school and college solar applications, the largest of them 320 kWp. We arrange the roof survey, model the output against the school's own half hourly consumption, and set out the funding routes.
298,900 kWh a year, modelled for a 320 kWp array on roughly 950 sqm of clear roof. That is the median size schools around Weston-super-Mare have applied for. Source: EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss.
Book a roof survey in Weston-super-Mare- 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.
Which schools around BS23 have applied
The Renewable Energy Planning Database records 2 school and college solar schemes in the BS23 postcode district. A college, Weston College, applied for 300 kWp roof mounted and the scheme holds consent and is awaiting construction. Bournville Primary School, Selworthy Road is down for a 320 kWp roof mounted array and the application holds consent and is awaiting construction. The applicant on record is Solar Options for Schools Limited.
None of these are ours. They are entries in the public planning record, reproduced here because a consented array at a school down the road is a better guide to your own prospects than any national average. Source: Renewable Energy Planning Database, Q1 2026.
One thing to be clear about: the drawing at the head of this page is an illustrative estate, not Weston College and not a survey of anyone's roof. What we know about the schemes above is only what the public planning record says.
The median array applied for here is 310 kWp, with the largest at 320 kWp. At 310 kWp you are covering roughly 921 square metres of roof once walkways, edge zones and rooflight setbacks come out, which on most sites means a sports hall plus one teaching block rather than the whole estate.
| Site on record | Applicant on record | Size | Mounting | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Weston College | Weston College | 300 kWp | Roof | Awaiting Construction |
| Bournville Primary School, Selworthy Road | Solar Options for Schools Limited | 320 kWp | Roof | Awaiting Construction |
Solar for education buildings across Somerset
A one kilowatt-peak array on a shallow pitched roof in Weston-super-Mare models at 934 kWh a year, from modelled irradiation of 1,196 kWh per square metre in the plane of the array (EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss). That is around 5 percent above the mean across the towns we cover, which is about as strong as a UK school roof gets.
Scaled up, a 320 kWp array, sized to the median array applied for at schools around Weston-super-Mare itself, models at about 298,900 kWh a year before shading, and needs roughly 950 square metres of clear roof. That size is not one we chose. It is what schools in this district have actually applied for.
Spread across the year that is about 75,600 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.
Weston-super-Mare ranks 1 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.
Term dates against the Weston-super-Mare generation curve
A Weston-super-Mare school roof generates most in the weeks its buildings are closed. 25.3 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 4.9 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 6.1 times as much in July as it does in December, and August alone outproduces December by about 5.1 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.
Summed over the year, about 49 percent of what a school roof makes arrives while the school is open. For a business trading every weekday the equivalent is roughly 71 percent. Nothing about Weston-super-Mare changes that ratio much, but plenty about your own site changes what to do with it.
Then there is the afternoon. From roughly three o'clock the building empties while the roof is still working, so a system sized on annual consumption will over-generate in exactly the hours nobody is there. We size on half hourly data for that reason.
A Weston-super-Mare governing body should read that as a sizing constraint, not a reason to stop. The base load that runs through the holidays, servers, comms, refrigeration, ventilation and hot water, is the floor the array should be built up from, and everything above it has to be justified by storage, export or summer occupancy.
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 | 42 | 23 | 20 |
| Mar | 21 | 77 | 52 | 25 |
| Apr | 12 | 111 | 44 | 67 |
| May | 17 | 128 | 70 | 58 |
| Jun | 21 | 127 | 89 | 38 |
| Jul | 11 | 129 | 46 | 83 |
| Aug | 0 | 107 | 0 | 107 |
| Sep | 20 | 84 | 56 | 28 |
| Oct | 17 | 52 | 29 | 23 |
| Nov | 21 | 30 | 21 | 9 |
| Dec | 15 | 21 | 10 | 11 |
| Year | 190 | 933 | 456 | 477 |
North Somerset schools, phase by phase
North Somerset has 80 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register teaching 31,327 pupils between them. Source: DfE Get Information About Schools.
The split is 64 primary, 11 secondary, 4 special and 1 further education, at an average of 392 pupils a site. That is 5.8 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
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).
Book a roof survey at your Weston-super-Mare school
Lenzie Consulting Ltd arranges roof surveys for schools across Somerset. Send the school postcode and a rough idea of the roof area, and the last twelve months of half hourly meter data if the school holds it. We come back with what the roofs can carry, what they would generate against your own consumption, and the funding routes open to a school.
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.
Weston-super-Mare school solar, answered
- How much would a school roof near Weston-super-Mare generate?
- Modelled at 934 kWh per kWp a year, a 320 kWp array on a Weston-super-Mare school models at about 298,900 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 Weston-super-Mare?
- It goes somewhere, just not into the timetable. 25.3 percent of the Weston-super-Mare 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 Weston-super-Mare 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 North Somerset 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 North Somerset on siting and design. Listed buildings and conservation areas are the usual exceptions. We put the position to North Somerset before a design is finalised.
- Has a school near BS23 already done this?
- 2 school schemes are on record in this postcode district, including a 300 kWp array at Weston College that holds consent and is awaiting construction. We were not involved in it. It is a public planning record, and it matters less as proof that solar works than as evidence of what this authority and this network operator have already accepted. Source: Renewable Energy Planning Database, Q1 2026.
- How many schools are there around Weston-super-Mare?
- North Somerset has 80 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register, with 31,327 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.