Specialist solar panels for schools in Sketty

School rooftop solar across Swansea

A one kilowatt-peak array on a shallow pitched roof in Sketty models at 921 kWh a year, from modelled irradiation of 1,176 kWh per square metre in the plane of the array (EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss). That is roughly 4 percent above the mean across the towns we cover, so latitude is working slightly in your favour here.

Scaled up, a 410 kWp array, sized to what the nearest school scheme on record applied for, 37 miles away at Barnstaple, models at about 377,600 kWh a year before shading, and needs roughly 1,218 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 95,900 kWh landing in July and August and roughly 17,700 kWh across December and January. National Grid Electricity Distribution 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.

What the planning record shows around Sketty

Sketty and the area around it 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 Sketty.

The nearest education scheme on the record is 37 miles from Sketty, at Barnstaple: 410 kWp at West Buckland School, West Buckland, applicant West Buckland School, which holds consent and is awaiting construction. That is someone else's application, not ours, and it is here because it shows what Devon planning has already accepted at an education site. Source: Renewable Energy Planning Database, Q1 2026.

The summer holiday problem for a Sketty school

25.4 percent of the annual output modelled for Sketty 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 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.

The inverse holds at the other end. December and January together return only 4.7 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 6.6 times as much in June as it does in December, and August alone outproduces December by about 5.4 to one. 75 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.

Nationally this comes out at about 49 percent of annual generation falling on a session day. A business open every weekday sees roughly 71 percent. The 22 point gap is what a school appraisal has to absorb, and it is much the same in Sketty as anywhere else.

The same mismatch repeats every day. Peak generation lands between eleven and three, the timetable ends shortly after, and by four the site is down to caretaking and cleaning. An annual consumption figure cannot show that, which is why we ask for the half hourly data instead.

The conclusion is not that a Sketty school should do nothing. It is that the array should be sized to the load that survives the holidays, which is usually the server room, the catering refrigeration, the ventilation and the hot water, plus whatever the site lets out over the summer. Anything above that line needs storage or an export agreement with National Grid Electricity Distribution to earn its keep.

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.

Grid connection through National Grid Electricity Distribution

National Grid Electricity Distribution operates the distribution network across Swansea, so the export application goes to them. Anything larger than 3.68 kW per phase falls under G99, which means an application before commissioning rather than a notification afterwards. A constrained network is not the end of a scheme. Capping export costs little when the building already absorbs most of what the roof produces.

Questions governors ask us about Sketty schools

How much would a school roof near Sketty generate?

Modelled at 921 kWh per kWp a year, a 410 kWp array on a Sketty school models at about 377,600 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 Sketty?

It goes somewhere, just not into the timetable. 25.4 percent of the Sketty 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 National Grid Electricity Distribution, or a sign the array is too big. We test which before sizing anything.

Which network operator handles the connection at a Sketty school?

Applications go to National Grid Electricity Distribution, who run the network across Swansea. An export-limited offer usually still works for a school, because the summer surplus is the part you were least likely to be paid much for anyway.