Specialist solar panels for schools in Washington
A kilowatt-peak on a Washington school roof models at 828 kWh a year, below the mean across the towns we cover, and the roofs it applies to are mostly carrying nothing. 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.
26.1% of the modelled year lands in July and August, on a roof that returns 828 kWh per kWp a year. The worked example below runs at 280 kWp, the median size on the national planning record. Source: EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss.
Book a roof survey in Washington- 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 PV for academy trusts across Tyne and Wear
A one kilowatt-peak array on a shallow pitched roof in Washington models at 828 kWh a year, from modelled irradiation of 1,055 kWh per square metre in the plane of the array (EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss). That is about 7 percent below the mean across the towns we cover, so the case at this latitude rests almost entirely on using the output on site rather than exporting it.
Scaled up, a 280 kWp array, sized to the median array applied for at schools on the national planning record, models at about 231,800 kWh a year before shading, and needs roughly 832 square metres of clear roof. We use the national median from the planning record rather than a round number, so the example stays anchored to what schools have applied for.
Spread across the year that is about 60,500 kWh landing in July and August and roughly 9,500 kWh across December and January. Northern Powergrid 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.
Washington ranks 4 of 6 towns we cover in Tyne and Wear on modelled yield, against a national mean of 886 kWh per kWp. The county runs from 806 to 849, a spread of 43 kWh per kWp. On a 500 kWp array that is about 21,500 kWh a year between the strongest and weakest town in the county.
The planning position for Washington schools
There is no school entry for the NE38 postcode district in the Renewable Energy Planning Database. The register is dependable for anything from a megawatt upward and incomplete below it, and a school array is usually nearer a fifth of a megawatt, so this says more about the threshold than about Washington.
The closest recorded one is about 9 miles away at Durham: Collingwood College, South Road, a 0 kWp roof mounted array applied for by Howarth Litchfield Partnership, which holds consent and is awaiting construction. We were not involved in it. We cite it because it is a public record of what has cleared planning in this part of County Durham. Source: Renewable Energy Planning Database, Q1 2026.
Why demand in Washington falls as the roof peaks
The generating year and the school year are out of step in Washington. July and August carry 26.1 percent of the modelled output (EU PVGIS v5.2), and the site is closed for most of those nine weeks. May is the strongest single month here at 14.5 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 4.1 percent of output falls in December and January, the two months when a Washington school is fully occupied and its heating and lighting are at their heaviest. The roof makes 8 times as much in May as it does in December, and August alone outproduces December by about 6.6 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.
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 Washington 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 Washington school has over that, and they are worth counting properly.
A Washington 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 full treatment of the school year against 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 | 19 | 12 | 7 |
| Feb | 15 | 35 | 19 | 16 |
| Mar | 21 | 67 | 45 | 22 |
| Apr | 12 | 98 | 39 | 59 |
| May | 17 | 120 | 66 | 54 |
| Jun | 21 | 113 | 79 | 34 |
| Jul | 11 | 117 | 42 | 75 |
| Aug | 0 | 99 | 0 | 99 |
| Sep | 20 | 75 | 50 | 25 |
| Oct | 17 | 44 | 24 | 20 |
| Nov | 21 | 25 | 18 | 8 |
| Dec | 15 | 15 | 7 | 8 |
| Year | 190 | 827 | 401 | 426 |
The school estate in Sunderland
Sunderland has 114 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register teaching 40,855 pupils between them. Source: DfE Get Information About Schools.
The split is 88 primary, 18 secondary, 7 special and 1 further education, at an average of 358 pupils a site. A ratio of 4.9 to one tells you where the roof area is. It is not with the 88 primaries, which mostly offer a hall and a teaching block each, but with the larger sites that were built with a sports hall and a dining block attached.
Where a multi-academy trust holds several of those sites, surveying the estate in one pass beats taking a roof at a time. The design work, the connection applications and the procurement paperwork are the same job repeated, and a trust that runs them together gets a better answer on all three.
Grid connection through Northern Powergrid
Connections around Washington are handled by Northern Powergrid, which sets the export limit for the site. Above 3.68 kW per phase the connection runs under G99, so the export limit is agreed in advance rather than assumed. Where the local network is constrained, an export-limited connection usually still makes the scheme work, because a school uses most of what the roof makes during the working day.
Across Tyne and Wear the planning database records 116 solar schemes totalling 290 MW, of which 3 are operational (REPD Q1 2026).
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 Washington 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 Washington trusts ask before a survey
- Is there enough sun around Washington for this to be worth doing?
- The model gives 828 kWh a year for every kWp installed at this latitude, so a 280 kWp array comes out at roughly 231,800 kWh a year before shading. It needs about 832 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 Washington school waste its generation in August?
- 26.1 percent of the modelled annual output for Washington 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 Northern Powergrid. We model all three against your half hourly data before an array is sized.
- Will the network around Washington accept the export?
- Northern Powergrid is the distribution network operator for Tyne and Wear. Anything above 3.68 kW per phase connects under G99, and the application fixes the export limit. On a school site the incoming supply is often the binding constraint rather than the roof, so we ask that question before anyone sizes an array.
- Is planning permission needed for panels on a school in Washington?
- Usually permitted development covers a roof array on a school, with prior approval from County Durham 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 Washington?
- Sunderland has 114 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register, with 40,855 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.