Specialist solar panels for schools in Crawley
Oriel High School sits on the planning record near Crawley at 190 kWp, which makes the question here less whether a school roof works and more what yours would carry. A survey here starts with the covering and the structure, then the incoming supply, then what the timetable actually draws.
173,900 kWh a year, modelled for a 190 kWp array on roughly 564 sqm of clear roof. That is the median size schools around Crawley have applied for. Source: EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss.
Book a roof survey in Crawley- 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 Crawley
The Renewable Energy Planning Database records 1 school and college solar scheme in the RH10 postcode district. Oriel High School is down for a 190 kWp roof mounted array and the application is generating. The applicant on record is West Sussex County Council.
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 Oriel High School or as any other Crawley site. Our knowledge of these applications comes entirely from the public record.
The median array applied for here is 190 kWp. At 190 kWp you are covering roughly 564 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 secondary school, which is worth knowing: a secondary site normally has a sports hall, a dining block and several flat roofs, which is where the usable area comes from.
| Site on record | Applicant on record | Size | Mounting | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oriel High School | West Sussex County Council | 190 kWp | Roof | Operational |
Solar PV for academy trusts across Sussex
A one kilowatt-peak array on a shallow pitched roof in Crawley models at 915 kWh a year, from modelled irradiation of 1,175 kWh per square metre in the plane of the array (EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss). Crawley models 3 percent above our mean. That is a real advantage, though a smaller one than the difference between an array matched to the timetable and one matched to the roof.
Scaled up, a 190 kWp array, sized to the median array applied for at schools around Crawley itself, models at about 173,900 kWh a year before shading, and needs roughly 564 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 44,700 kWh landing in July and August and roughly 8,900 kWh across December and January. The July figure is the one worth putting in front of a governing body first.
Crawley ranks 10 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 Crawley falls as the roof peaks
The generating year and the school year are out of step in Crawley. 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 5.1 percent of output falls in December and January, the two months when a Crawley school is fully occupied and its heating and lighting are at their heaviest. The roof makes 5.8 times as much in June as it does in December, and August alone outproduces December by about 4.9 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.
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 Crawley school has over that, and they are worth counting properly.
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 the network operator pays for the surplus that is left.
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 | 25 | 16 | 9 |
| Feb | 15 | 39 | 21 | 18 |
| Mar | 21 | 74 | 50 | 24 |
| Apr | 12 | 106 | 42 | 64 |
| May | 17 | 121 | 66 | 55 |
| Jun | 21 | 128 | 90 | 38 |
| Jul | 11 | 128 | 45 | 83 |
| Aug | 0 | 107 | 0 | 107 |
| Sep | 20 | 84 | 56 | 28 |
| Oct | 17 | 51 | 28 | 23 |
| Nov | 21 | 31 | 22 | 9 |
| Dec | 15 | 22 | 11 | 11 |
| Year | 190 | 916 | 447 | 469 |
The school estate in Crawley
Crawley has 34 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register teaching 20,400 pupils between them. Source: DfE Get Information About Schools.
The split is 25 primary, 7 secondary and 2 special, at an average of 600 pupils a site. That is 3.6 primaries for every secondary, which is the ratio that matters for a roof: a primary of a few hundred pupils usually offers a hall roof and one teaching block, while a secondary site carries a sports hall, a dining block and several flat roofs.
If your trust holds several of them, the sequencing question comes before the sizing question. Roof age, covering type and the state of the incoming supply vary block by block across an estate, and that is normally what sets the order of works.
Send us the school postcode
The first survey answers three questions at once: what the roofs carry, what they generate against your own timetable, and how a Crawley school pays for it. Send the postcode, an approximate roof area per block and half hourly meter data if the school can get it from its supplier.
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 Crawley trusts ask before a survey
- Is there enough sun around Crawley for this to be worth doing?
- The model gives 915 kWh a year for every kWp installed at this latitude, so a 190 kWp array comes out at roughly 173,900 kWh a year before shading. It needs about 564 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 Crawley school waste its generation in August?
- 25.7 percent of the modelled annual output for Crawley 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 Crawley?
- Usually permitted development covers a roof array on a school, with prior approval from Crawley 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 RH10 already done this?
- One school scheme is on record in this postcode district, including a 190 kWp array at Oriel High School that is generating. 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 Crawley?
- Crawley has 34 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register, with 20,400 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.