Specialist solar panels for schools in Haywards Heath
25.7 percent of what a Haywards Heath school roof makes arrives in July and August, which is when the buildings are shut. We arrange the roof survey, model the output against the school's own half hourly consumption, and set out the funding routes.
181,800 kWh a year, modelled for a 190 kWp array on roughly 564 sqm of clear roof. That is 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 Haywards Heath- 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 Haywards Heath models at 957 kWh a year, from modelled irradiation of 1,230 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 8 percent above the mean across the towns we cover, which is about as strong as a UK school roof gets.
Scaled up, a 190 kWp array, sized to what the nearest school scheme on record applied for, 9 miles away at Crawley, models at about 181,800 kWh a year before shading, and needs roughly 564 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 46,700 kWh landing in July and August and roughly 9,300 kWh across December and January. The July figure is the one worth putting in front of a governing body first.
Haywards Heath ranks 8 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 RH16
Search the Renewable Energy Planning Database for the RH16 postcode district and nothing comes back under education. That is worth stating plainly and then setting aside: the register is built around generating stations, a school array is a fraction of the size it captures reliably, and plenty of school roofs never appear in any national record at all.
Look 9 miles out and there is one: Oriel High School in Crawley, 190 kWp, applied for by West Sussex County Council, which is generating. 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 Haywards Heath generation curve
A Haywards Heath school roof generates most in the weeks its buildings are closed. 25.7 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 14.1 percent of the annual total, which is still term time, and that works slightly in your favour against towns whose curve peaks in July.
Winter reverses it. December and January between them return 5.1 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 5.9 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.
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 Haywards Heath 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 Haywards Heath school has over that, and they are worth counting properly.
A Haywards Heath 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 | 26 | 17 | 9 |
| Feb | 15 | 41 | 22 | 19 |
| Mar | 21 | 77 | 52 | 25 |
| Apr | 12 | 112 | 45 | 67 |
| May | 17 | 126 | 69 | 57 |
| Jun | 21 | 135 | 95 | 41 |
| Jul | 11 | 134 | 48 | 86 |
| Aug | 0 | 112 | 0 | 112 |
| Sep | 20 | 86 | 57 | 29 |
| Oct | 17 | 53 | 29 | 24 |
| Nov | 21 | 32 | 22 | 10 |
| Dec | 15 | 23 | 11 | 12 |
| Year | 190 | 957 | 467 | 490 |
Mid Sussex schools, phase by phase
Mid Sussex has 50 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register teaching 21,471 pupils between them. Source: DfE Get Information About Schools.
The split is 41 primary, 7 secondary and 2 special, at an average of 429 pupils a site. 5.9 primaries per secondary is a mix weighted towards small sites. The roof area, and therefore most of the generation, sits with the 7 secondaries.
Across an estate of that size the roofs will not be in the same condition, and that is the point of surveying them together: the block with the best orientation is often not the block whose covering has twenty years left in it.
Book a roof survey at your Haywards Heath school
Roof condition decides the order of works on most school estates, so that is where we start. Send us the postcode and a rough roof area, with twelve months of half hourly readings if you have them, and we come back with usable area, modelled output against your own load, and the funding routes.
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.
Haywards Heath school solar, answered
- How much would a school roof near Haywards Heath generate?
- Modelled at 957 kWh per kWp a year, a 190 kWp array on a Haywards Heath school models at about 181,800 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 Haywards Heath?
- It goes somewhere, just not into the timetable. 25.7 percent of the Haywards Heath 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 your network operator, or a sign the array is too big. We test which before sizing anything.
- What does Lewes 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 Lewes on siting and design. Listed buildings and conservation areas are the usual exceptions. We put the position to Lewes before a design is finalised.
- How many schools are there around Haywards Heath?
- Mid Sussex has 50 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register, with 21,471 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.