Specialist solar panels for schools in Chichester
A 350 kWp array at Chichester College, Westgate Fields 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.
359,800 kWh a year, modelled for a 350 kWp array on roughly 1,040 sqm of clear roof. That is the median size schools around Chichester have applied for. Source: EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss.
Book a roof survey in Chichester- 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 solar consented near Chichester
The Renewable Energy Planning Database records 1 school and college solar scheme in the PO19 postcode district. Chichester College, Westgate Fields is down for a 350 kWp roof mounted array and the application holds consent and is awaiting construction. The applicant on record is Green Nation Solar Energy.
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 Chichester College, Westgate Fields or as any other Chichester site. Our knowledge of these applications comes entirely from the public record.
The median array applied for here is 350 kWp. At 350 kWp you are covering roughly 1,040 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.
Every one of them is a college, which is worth knowing: a college runs longer days and more plant than a school, and it usually has the flat roof area to match.
| Site on record | Applicant on record | Size | Mounting | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chichester College, Westgate Fields | Green Nation Solar Energy | 350 kWp | Roof | Awaiting Construction |
Solar PV for academy trusts across Sussex
A one kilowatt-peak array on a shallow pitched roof in Chichester models at 1,028 kWh a year, from modelled irradiation of 1,303 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 16 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 the median array applied for at schools around Chichester itself, models at about 359,800 kWh a year before shading, and needs roughly 1,040 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 92,500 kWh landing in July and August and roughly 18,000 kWh across December and January. The July figure is the one worth putting in front of a governing body first.
Chichester ranks 1 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.
Why demand in Chichester falls as the roof peaks
The generating year and the school year are out of step in Chichester. 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 14.1 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 5 percent of output falls in December and January, the two months when a Chichester school is fully occupied and its heating and lighting are at their heaviest. The roof makes 6 times as much in June 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.
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 Chichester 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 Chichester school has over that, and they are worth counting properly.
A Chichester 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.
- 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 | 44 | 24 | 20 |
| Mar | 21 | 83 | 56 | 27 |
| Apr | 12 | 120 | 48 | 72 |
| May | 17 | 138 | 76 | 62 |
| Jun | 21 | 145 | 102 | 44 |
| Jul | 11 | 145 | 51 | 94 |
| Aug | 0 | 119 | 0 | 119 |
| Sep | 20 | 92 | 61 | 31 |
| Oct | 17 | 56 | 31 | 25 |
| Nov | 21 | 34 | 24 | 10 |
| Dec | 15 | 24 | 12 | 12 |
| Year | 190 | 1027 | 502 | 525 |
The school estate in Chichester
Chichester has 60 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register teaching 14,383 pupils between them. Source: DfE Get Information About Schools.
The split is 49 primary, 6 secondary, 3 special and 2 further education, at an average of 240 pupils a site. Read 8.2 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.
Send us the school postcode
A survey in Chichester starts with three things from you. Give us the postcode, the approximate roof area and, if you can get it from your supplier, twelve months of half hourly readings. What comes back is a usable area figure per block, output modelled against your own load rather than an average, and the ways a Chichester school can pay for it.
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 Chichester trusts ask before a survey
- Is there enough sun around Chichester for this to be worth doing?
- The model gives 1,028 kWh a year for every kWp installed at this latitude, so a 350 kWp array comes out at roughly 359,800 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 Chichester school waste its generation in August?
- 25.7 percent of the modelled annual output for Chichester 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 Chichester?
- Usually permitted development covers a roof array on a school, with prior approval from Chichester 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.
- Has a school near PO19 already done this?
- One school scheme is on record in this postcode district, including a 350 kWp array at Chichester College, Westgate Fields 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 Chichester?
- Chichester has 60 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register, with 14,383 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.