Solar panels for schools across Suffolk

The school estate in Suffolk

Suffolk has 317 open state-funded schools and colleges teaching 97,981 pupils, spread across 5 local authorities. Source: DfE Get Information About Schools.

Of those, 254 primary, 43 secondary, 15 special and 5 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 Suffolk roof models

Modelled yield is not flat across Suffolk. Leiston comes out at 956 kWh per kWp a year against 905 at Newmarket, a spread of 51 kWh per kWp. On a 500 kWp school array that difference is about 25,500 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 Suffolk planning record

The Renewable Energy Planning Database records 3 school and college solar schemes in Suffolk, across 2 of the towns we cover. They include West Suffolk College, Western Way at Bury St Edmunds and Felixstowe School, High Street at Felixstowe. The median array applied for is 500 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 UK Power Networks. 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.