Specialist solar panels for schools in Ipswich
UK Power Networks runs the network around Ipswich, and on a school site their answer on export shapes the design as much as the roof pitch does. We look at the roof, the switchboard and the timetable in that order, then set the array size against what the site draws in term time.
25.5% of the modelled year lands in July and August, on a roof that returns 933 kWh per kWp a year. The worked example below runs at 220 kWp, 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 Ipswich- 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 Suffolk
A one kilowatt-peak array on a shallow pitched roof in Ipswich models at 933 kWh a year, from modelled irradiation of 1,188 kWh per square metre in the plane of the array (EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss). At 5 percent above our mean, Ipswich is at the strong end of the range, and a roof here earns more for every square metre than the same roof would further north.
Scaled up, a 220 kWp array, sized to what the nearest school scheme on record applied for, 10 miles away at Felixstowe, models at about 205,300 kWh a year before shading, and needs roughly 653 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 52,400 kWh landing in July and August and roughly 10,100 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.
Ipswich ranks 4 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.
What the planning record shows around Ipswich
The IP1 postcode district has no education solar entry in the Renewable Energy Planning Database. Almost no school array is large enough to be captured there reliably, so the absence tells you about the reporting threshold and very little about what is already on the roofs around Ipswich.
The nearest education scheme on the record is 10 miles from Ipswich, at Felixstowe: 220 kWp at Felixstowe School, High Street, applicant eEnergy, which holds consent and is awaiting construction. That is someone else's application, not ours, and it is here because it shows what Suffolk planning has already accepted at an education site. Source: Renewable Energy Planning Database, Q1 2026.
The summer holiday problem for a Ipswich school
25.5 percent of the annual output modelled for Ipswich 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. June is the strongest single month here at 13.9 percent of the annual total, which is still term time, and that works slightly in your favour against towns whose curve peaks in July.
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 6.2 times as much in June as it does in December, and August alone outproduces December by about 5.2 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.
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 UK Power Networks pays for the surplus that is left.
We set out the full treatment of the school year against 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 | 39 | 21 | 18 |
| Mar | 21 | 75 | 51 | 24 |
| Apr | 12 | 110 | 44 | 66 |
| May | 17 | 126 | 69 | 57 |
| Jun | 21 | 130 | 91 | 39 |
| Jul | 11 | 128 | 45 | 83 |
| Aug | 0 | 110 | 0 | 110 |
| Sep | 20 | 85 | 57 | 28 |
| Oct | 17 | 53 | 29 | 24 |
| Nov | 21 | 31 | 22 | 9 |
| Dec | 15 | 21 | 10 | 11 |
| Year | 190 | 933 | 455 | 478 |
Grid connection through UK Power Networks
UK Power Networks 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 Suffolk the planning database records 118 solar schemes totalling 1369 MW, of which 23 are operational (REPD Q1 2026).
How many schools Ipswich has
Ipswich has 46 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register teaching 21,819 pupils between them. Source: DfE Get Information About Schools.
The split is 33 primary, 8 secondary, 4 special and 1 further education, at an average of 474 pupils a site. At 4.1 primaries to every secondary, most of the buildings here are small. That is not a reason to skip them, but it does mean the usable area on a primary is a hall roof and a teaching block rather than an estate.
For a trust with more than one site in Ipswich, the first survey is worth running across the whole estate. It tells you which roofs are near the end of their covering life, which have the switchboard headroom, and therefore which one should carry the first array.
Start with the Ipswich roof
We survey school and college roofs throughout Suffolk. 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 Ipswich schools
- What would a 220 kWp array produce at a Ipswich school?
- Yes, and the figure matters more than the sunshine. 933 kWh per kWp a year puts a 220 kWp array at around 205,300 kWh, on roughly 653 square metres of roof. The value of that depends on your term time load. Source: EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss.
- What happens to the electricity during the summer holidays in Ipswich?
- Less is wasted than governors expect, but the figure is worth seeing: 25.5 percent of the year is modelled to arrive in July and August here (EU PVGIS v5.2), against a site running on holiday base load. Lettings, holiday clubs and summer works take some of it, storage takes more, and the rest is an export question for UK Power Networks.
- Who do we apply to for export near Ipswich?
- Only UK Power Networks can answer it for your connection. What we can say is that a capped export limit rarely breaks a school scheme, because the array that suits a school is sized to the term time load rather than to the roof.
- Do we need planning permission in Ipswich?
- Often not, because panels on the roof of a school building usually sit within permitted development for non-domestic buildings. The exceptions are listed buildings, conservation areas and arrays that project too far above the roof plane, and larger schemes still need prior approval from Ipswich. We confirm it either way.
- How many schools are there around Ipswich?
- Ipswich has 46 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register, with 21,819 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.