Specialist solar panels for schools in Tamworth
A school roof in Tamworth makes 6 times as much in July as it does in December, and the school year runs against that curve rather than with it. What we come back with is the usable roof area, the modelled output against your meter data, and the routes schools use to pay for it.
248,500 kWh a year, modelled for a 290 kWp array on roughly 861 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 Tamworth- 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.
School rooftop solar across Staffordshire
A one kilowatt-peak array on a shallow pitched roof in Tamworth models at 857 kWh a year, from modelled irradiation of 1,098 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 290 kWp array, sized to what the nearest school scheme on record applied for, 11 miles away at Nuneaton, models at about 248,500 kWh a year before shading, and needs roughly 861 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 63,600 kWh landing in July and August and roughly 12,200 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.
Tamworth ranks 1 of 7 towns we cover in Staffordshire on modelled yield, against a national mean of 886 kWh per kWp. The county runs from 826 to 857, a spread of 31 kWh per kWp. Within Staffordshire that difference is small enough to ignore: where the building sits is not what decides this scheme, your consumption pattern is.
What the planning record shows around Tamworth
Search the Renewable Energy Planning Database for the B77 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.
The nearest education scheme on the record is 11 miles from Tamworth, at Nuneaton: 290 kWp at North Warwickshire College, Hinckley Road, applicant North Warwickshire South Leicestershire College, which holds consent and is awaiting construction. That is someone else's application, not ours, and it is here because it shows what Warwickshire planning has already accepted at an education site. Source: Renewable Energy Planning Database, Q1 2026.
The summer holiday problem for a Tamworth school
25.6 percent of the annual output modelled for Tamworth arrives in the two months a school uses least (EU PVGIS v5.2). Term ends in the third week of July and the buildings stay largely empty until September. July is the single strongest month here at 14 percent of the annual total, and it falls almost entirely inside the holiday.
The inverse holds at the other end. December and January together return only 4.9 percent of the year, and those are the months with the heating, the lighting and the full timetable all running at once. The roof makes 6 times as much in July as it does in December, and August alone outproduces December by about 5 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 Tamworth 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 Tamworth 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 | 22 | 14 | 8 |
| Feb | 15 | 36 | 19 | 17 |
| Mar | 21 | 71 | 48 | 23 |
| Apr | 12 | 100 | 40 | 60 |
| May | 17 | 117 | 64 | 53 |
| Jun | 21 | 118 | 83 | 35 |
| Jul | 11 | 120 | 43 | 77 |
| Aug | 0 | 100 | 0 | 100 |
| Sep | 20 | 79 | 53 | 26 |
| Oct | 17 | 48 | 26 | 22 |
| Nov | 21 | 27 | 19 | 8 |
| Dec | 15 | 20 | 10 | 10 |
| Year | 190 | 858 | 419 | 439 |
How many schools Tamworth has
Tamworth has 34 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register teaching 9,758 pupils between them. Source: DfE Get Information About Schools.
The split is 27 primary, 4 secondary, 2 special and 1 further education, at an average of 287 pupils a site. 6.8 primaries per secondary is a mix weighted towards small sites. The roof area, and therefore most of the generation, sits with the 4 secondaries and the 1 further education site.
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.
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 Staffordshire the planning database records 118 solar schemes totalling 1054 MW, of which 17 are operational (REPD Q1 2026).
Start with the Tamworth roof
We survey school and college roofs throughout Staffordshire. 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.
Questions governors ask us about Tamworth schools
- How much would a school roof near Tamworth generate?
- Modelled at 857 kWh per kWp a year, a 290 kWp array on a Tamworth school models at about 248,500 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 Tamworth?
- It goes somewhere, just not into the timetable. 25.6 percent of the Tamworth 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 Tamworth school?
- Applications go to National Grid Electricity Distribution, who run the network across Staffordshire. 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 Tamworth 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 Tamworth on siting and design. Listed buildings and conservation areas are the usual exceptions. We put the position to Tamworth before a design is finalised.
- How many schools are there around Tamworth?
- Tamworth has 34 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register, with 9,758 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.