How much would a school roof near Felixstowe generate?

Modelled at 950 kWh per kWp a year, a 220 kWp array on a Felixstowe school models at about 209,000 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 Felixstowe?

It goes somewhere, just not into the timetable. 25.7 percent of the Felixstowe 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 UK Power Networks, or a sign the array is too big. We test which before sizing anything.

Which network operator handles the connection at a Felixstowe school?

Applications go to UK Power Networks, who run the network across Suffolk. 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 East Suffolk 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 East Suffolk on siting and design. Listed buildings and conservation areas are the usual exceptions. We put the position to East Suffolk before a design is finalised.

Has a school near IP11 already done this?

One school scheme is on record in this postcode district, including a 220 kWp array at Felixstowe School, High Street 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 Felixstowe?

East Suffolk has 101 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register, with 29,869 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 Felixstowe

A 220 kWp array at Felixstowe School, High Street is the nearest school scheme on the planning record, and it holds consent and is awaiting construction. The survey records sheet type, remaining life, purlin spacing and the state of the incoming supply, and the model runs off your own meter data rather than an average.

209,000 kWh a year, modelled for a 220 kWp array on roughly 653 sqm of clear roof. That is the median size schools around Felixstowe have applied for. Source: EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss.

Book a roof survey in Felixstowe

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

Drawing Illustrative estate, not a Felixstowe school

Blocks 4, 3 with array

Array about 345 kWp

Yield about 328,000 kWh/yr

Frontage about 90 m / Rev A / IP11

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.

Felixstowe / Suffolk

A school on the edge of an eastern commuter town, solar arrays on its roofs and wooded low hills beyond — School buildings of the kind we survey across East of England. Not a named school and not our work.

School solar consented near Felixstowe

The Renewable Energy Planning Database records 1 school and college solar scheme in the IP11 postcode district. Felixstowe School, High Street is down for a 220 kWp roof mounted array and the application holds consent and is awaiting construction. The applicant on record is eEnergy.

Those are other organisations' planning applications, not our projects. We list them because a scheme a few miles away tells you what this local authority and this network operator have already accepted for a building very like yours. Source: Renewable Energy Planning Database, Q1 2026.

The plan above the fold is a generic four block estate, drawn to make the scale and the phasing legible. Nobody should read it as Felixstowe School, High Street or as any other Felixstowe site. Our knowledge of these applications comes entirely from the public record.

The median array applied for here is 220 kWp. At 220 kWp you are covering roughly 653 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
Felixstowe School, High Street	eEnergy	220 kWp	Roof	Awaiting Construction

Solar PV for academy trusts across Suffolk

A one kilowatt-peak array on a shallow pitched roof in Felixstowe models at 950 kWh a year, from modelled irradiation of 1,212 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 7 percent above the mean across the towns we cover, which is about as strong as a UK school roof gets.

Scaled up, a 220 kWp array, sized to the median array applied for at schools around Felixstowe itself, models at about 209,000 kWh a year before shading, and needs roughly 653 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 53,700 kWh landing in July and August and roughly 10,000 kWh across December and January. UK Power Networks 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 Felixstowe against the rest of Suffolk

Leiston956
Felixstowe950
Lowestoft938
Ipswich933
Sudbury923
Stowmarket922
Bury St Edmunds912
Newmarket905

Felixstowe ranks 2 of 8 towns we cover in Suffolk on modelled yield, against a national mean of 886 kWh per kWp. The county runs from 905 to 956, a spread of 51 kWh per kWp. On a 500 kWp array that is about 25,500 kWh a year between the strongest and weakest town in the county.

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

Why demand in Felixstowe falls as the roof peaks

The generating year and the school year are out of step in Felixstowe. July and August carry 25.7 percent of the modelled output (EU PVGIS v5.2), and the site is closed for most of those nine weeks. June is the strongest single month here at 14 percent of the annual total, which is still term time, and that works slightly in your favour against towns whose curve peaks in July.

At the other end of the year the mismatch flips. Only 4.8 percent of output falls in December and January, the two months when a Felixstowe school is fully occupied and its heating and lighting are at their heaviest. The roof makes 6.3 times as much in June as it does in December, and August alone outproduces December by about 5.3 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 Felixstowe changes that ratio much, but plenty about your own site changes what to do with it.

The same mismatch repeats every day. Peak generation lands between eleven and three, the timetable ends shortly after, and by four the site is down to caretaking and cleaning. An annual consumption figure cannot show that, which is why we ask for the half hourly data instead.

A Felixstowe 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.

FIG. 2 A Felixstowe 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 Felixstowe, 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	39	21	18
Mar	21	75	51	24
Apr	12	113	45	68
May	17	130	71	59
Jun	21	133	93	40
Jul	11	133	47	86
Aug	0	111	0	111
Sep	20	87	58	29
Oct	17	53	29	24
Nov	21	31	22	9
Dec	15	21	10	11
Year	190	951	463	488

Per kWp installed, month by month, separating generation while the school is open from generation at a weekend or in the holidays. 74 percent of the Felixstowe year sits between April and September, most of which is term time; it is the tail of that period, the last week of July and all of August, that the school is not there for. The daily split is a flat apportionment of each month, not a metered one. 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

The school estate in East Suffolk

East Suffolk has 101 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register teaching 29,869 pupils between them. Source: DfE Get Information About Schools.

The split is 84 primary, 12 secondary, 4 special and 1 further education, at an average of 296 pupils a site. A ratio of 7 to one tells you where the roof area is. It is not with the 84 primaries, which mostly offer a hall and a teaching block each, but with the larger sites that were built with a sports hall and a dining block attached.

Where a multi-academy trust holds several of those sites, surveying the estate in one pass beats taking a roof at a time. The design work, the connection applications and the procurement paperwork are the same job repeated, and a trust that runs them together gets a better answer on all three.

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.

Grid connection through UK Power Networks

Connections around Felixstowe are handled by UK Power Networks, 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 Suffolk the planning database records 118 solar schemes totalling 1369 MW, of which 23 are operational (REPD Q1 2026).

Book the survey

Send us the school postcode

Lenzie Consulting Ltd arranges roof surveys for schools across Suffolk. 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.

What Felixstowe trusts ask before a survey

How much would a school roof near Felixstowe generate?: Modelled at 950 kWh per kWp a year, a 220 kWp array on a Felixstowe school models at about 209,000 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 Felixstowe?: It goes somewhere, just not into the timetable. 25.7 percent of the Felixstowe 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 UK Power Networks, or a sign the array is too big. We test which before sizing anything.
Which network operator handles the connection at a Felixstowe school?: Applications go to UK Power Networks, who run the network across Suffolk. 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 East Suffolk 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 East Suffolk on siting and design. Listed buildings and conservation areas are the usual exceptions. We put the position to East Suffolk before a design is finalised.
Has a school near IP11 already done this?: One school scheme is on record in this postcode district, including a 220 kWp array at Felixstowe School, High Street 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 Felixstowe?: East Suffolk has 101 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register, with 29,869 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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