Specialist solar panels for schools in Bognor Regis
Arun has 43 state-funded schools and colleges, and most of them are buying electricity in exactly the hours their own roofs could be making it. We arrange the roof survey, model the output against the school's own half hourly consumption, and set out the funding routes.
1000 kWh per kWp a year at this latitude, so a 350 kWp array, the size applied for at the nearest school scheme on record, models at about 350,000 kWh. Source: EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss.
Book a roof survey in Bognor Regis- 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.
Solar for education buildings across Sussex
A one kilowatt-peak array on a shallow pitched roof in Bognor Regis models at 1,000 kWh a year, from modelled irradiation of 1,267 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 13 percent above the mean across the towns we cover, which is about as strong as a UK school roof gets.
Scaled up, a 350 kWp array, sized to what the nearest school scheme on record applied for, 5 miles away at Chichester, models at about 350,000 kWh a year before shading, and needs roughly 1,040 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 90,700 kWh landing in July and August and roughly 17,500 kWh across December and January. The July figure is the one worth putting in front of a governing body first.
Bognor Regis ranks 5 of 10 towns we cover in Sussex on modelled yield, against a national mean of 886 kWh per kWp. The county runs from 915 to 1028, a spread of 113 kWh per kWp. On a 500 kWp array that is about 56,500 kWh a year between the strongest and weakest town in the county.
School solar on record near PO21
No school or college solar scheme appears in the PO21 postcode district in the Renewable Energy Planning Database. That is a reporting threshold rather than a verdict. The database records generating stations from one megawatt upward reliably and smaller ones patchily, and almost every school array is a fraction of that, so a roof full of panels on a Bognor Regis secondary could be generating today without ever reaching it.
Look 5 miles out and there is one: Chichester College, Westgate Fields in Chichester, 350 kWp, applied for by Green Nation Solar Energy, which holds consent and is awaiting construction. None of our doing. It is a public planning record, and the nearest evidence available of how an application like yours is treated around here. Source: Renewable Energy Planning Database, Q1 2026.
Term dates against the Bognor Regis generation curve
A Bognor Regis school roof generates most in the weeks its buildings are closed. 25.9 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. June is the strongest single month here at 14.2 percent of the annual total, which is still term time, and that works slightly in your favour against towns whose curve peaks in July.
Winter reverses it. December and January between them return 5 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 6.2 times as much in June 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 Bognor Regis changes that ratio much, but plenty about your own site changes what to do with it.
And the week has the same hole in it. Two days in seven the site is closed altogether, at no cost to the generation, which is part of why the session day share sits where it does. Weekend lettings are the one lever a Bognor Regis school has over that, and they are worth counting properly.
A Bognor Regis 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 complete version of the term time arithmetic 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 | 27 | 17 | 10 |
| Feb | 15 | 42 | 23 | 20 |
| Mar | 21 | 80 | 54 | 26 |
| Apr | 12 | 117 | 47 | 70 |
| May | 17 | 134 | 73 | 61 |
| Jun | 21 | 142 | 99 | 43 |
| Jul | 11 | 142 | 50 | 92 |
| Aug | 0 | 117 | 0 | 117 |
| Sep | 20 | 90 | 60 | 30 |
| Oct | 17 | 55 | 30 | 25 |
| Nov | 21 | 32 | 22 | 10 |
| Dec | 15 | 23 | 11 | 12 |
| Year | 190 | 1001 | 486 | 515 |
Arun schools, phase by phase
Arun has 43 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register teaching 18,314 pupils between them. Source: DfE Get Information About Schools.
The split is 36 primary, 6 secondary and 1 special, at an average of 426 pupils a site. Read 6 primaries per secondary as a sequencing hint rather than a statistic. A primary is a single survey visit and a modest array; a secondary is several roofs of different ages on one site, and that is where both the area and the complications are.
A trust holding more than one of these sites should look at them together. Grouping the surveys turns the grid question, the funding question and the procurement route into one exercise rather than four, and it usually changes which roof goes first.
Book a roof survey at your Bognor Regis school
We survey school and college roofs throughout Sussex. 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.
Bognor Regis school solar, answered
- Is there enough sun around Bognor Regis for this to be worth doing?
- The model gives 1,000 kWh a year for every kWp installed at this latitude, so a 350 kWp array comes out at roughly 350,000 kWh a year before shading. It needs about 1,040 square metres of clear roof once walkways and rooflight setbacks are allowed for. Source: EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss.
- Does a Bognor Regis school waste its generation in August?
- 25.9 percent of the modelled annual output for Bognor Regis falls in July and August, when the buildings are closed for most of six weeks (EU PVGIS v5.2). It does not go to waste, but it only has three places to go: the base load that runs regardless, such as servers, catering refrigeration and ventilation; storage; or export under an agreement with your network operator. We model all three against your half hourly data before an array is sized.
- Is planning permission needed for panels on a school in Bognor Regis?
- Usually permitted development covers a roof array on a school, with prior approval from Arun needed above a capacity threshold. A ground mounted array in the grounds is a different question and much more likely to need a full application. We check both before design sign-off.
- How many schools are there around Bognor Regis?
- Arun has 43 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register, with 18,314 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.