Specialist solar panels for schools in Nuneaton
The planning record around Nuneaton carries 2 school and college solar applications, the largest of them 290 kWp. We arrange the roof survey, model the output against the school's own half hourly consumption, and set out the funding routes.
251,100 kWh a year, modelled for a 290 kWp array on roughly 861 sqm of clear roof. That is the median size schools around Nuneaton have applied for. Source: EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss.
Book a roof survey in Nuneaton- 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.
Which schools around CV11 have applied
The Renewable Energy Planning Database records 2 school and college solar schemes in the CV11 postcode district. A college, North Warwickshire College, Hinckley Road, applied for 290 kWp roof mounted and the scheme holds consent and is awaiting construction. The applicant on record is North Warwickshire South Leicestershire College. George eliot high school, Raveloe Drive is down for a 290 kWp roof mounted array and the application holds consent and is awaiting construction. The applicant on record is George Eliot Academy.
None of these are ours. They are entries in the public planning record, reproduced here because a consented array at a school down the road is a better guide to your own prospects than any national average. Source: Renewable Energy Planning Database, Q1 2026.
One thing to be clear about: the drawing at the head of this page is an illustrative estate, not North Warwickshire College, Hinckley Road and not a survey of anyone's roof. What we know about the schemes above is only what the public planning record says.
The median array applied for here is 290 kWp. At 290 kWp you are covering roughly 861 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.
| Site on record | Applicant on record | Size | Mounting | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| North Warwickshire College, Hinckley Road | North Warwickshire South Leicestershire College | 290 kWp | Roof | Awaiting Construction |
| George eliot high school, Raveloe Drive | George Eliot Academy | 290 kWp | Roof | Awaiting Construction |
Solar for education buildings across Warwickshire
A one kilowatt-peak array on a shallow pitched roof in Nuneaton models at 866 kWh a year, from modelled irradiation of 1,107 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 2 percent below the mean across the towns we cover, which is a smaller gap than most schools expect and smaller than the gap between a well matched and a badly matched system.
Scaled up, a 290 kWp array, sized to the median array applied for at schools around Nuneaton itself, models at about 251,100 kWh a year before shading, and needs roughly 861 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 64,500 kWh landing in July and August and roughly 12,600 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.
Nuneaton ranks 6 of 7 towns we cover in Warwickshire on modelled yield, against a national mean of 886 kWh per kWp. The county runs from 866 to 893, a spread of 27 kWh per kWp. Within Warwickshire that difference is small enough to ignore: where the building sits is not what decides this scheme, your consumption pattern is.
Term dates against the Nuneaton generation curve
A Nuneaton 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. July is the single strongest month here at 13.8 percent of the annual total, and it falls almost entirely inside the holiday.
Winter reverses it. December and January between them return 5 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 6 times as much in July as it does in December, and August alone outproduces December by about 5.2 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 Nuneaton changes that ratio much, but plenty about your own site changes what to do with it.
Then there is the afternoon. From roughly three o'clock the building empties while the roof is still working, so a system sized on annual consumption will over-generate in exactly the hours nobody is there. We size on half hourly data for that reason.
A Nuneaton 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 | 23 | 15 | 8 |
| Feb | 15 | 38 | 20 | 18 |
| Mar | 21 | 71 | 48 | 23 |
| Apr | 12 | 100 | 40 | 60 |
| May | 17 | 117 | 64 | 53 |
| Jun | 21 | 118 | 83 | 35 |
| Jul | 11 | 120 | 43 | 77 |
| Aug | 0 | 103 | 0 | 103 |
| Sep | 20 | 80 | 53 | 27 |
| Oct | 17 | 49 | 27 | 22 |
| Nov | 21 | 28 | 20 | 8 |
| Dec | 15 | 20 | 10 | 10 |
| Year | 190 | 867 | 423 | 444 |
Nuneaton and Bedworth schools, phase by phase
Nuneaton and Bedworth has 52 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register teaching 20,018 pupils between them. Source: DfE Get Information About Schools.
The split is 37 primary, 8 secondary, 5 special and 2 further education, at an average of 385 pupils a site. At 4.6 primaries to every secondary, most of the buildings here are small. That is not a reason to skip them, but it does mean the usable area on a primary is a hall roof and a teaching block rather than an estate.
For a trust with more than one site in Nuneaton and Bedworth, the first survey is worth running across the whole estate. It tells you which roofs are near the end of their covering life, which have the switchboard headroom, and therefore which one should carry the first array.
Grid connection through National Grid Electricity Distribution
National Grid Electricity Distribution operates the distribution network across Warwickshire, 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.
Across Warwickshire the planning database records 94 solar schemes totalling 1201 MW, of which 18 are operational (REPD Q1 2026).
Book a roof survey at your Nuneaton 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.
Nuneaton school solar, answered
- How much would a school roof near Nuneaton generate?
- Modelled at 866 kWh per kWp a year, a 290 kWp array on a Nuneaton school models at about 251,100 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 Nuneaton?
- It goes somewhere, just not into the timetable. 25.7 percent of the Nuneaton 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 Nuneaton school?
- Applications go to National Grid Electricity Distribution, who run the network across Warwickshire. 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.
- What does Nuneaton and Bedworth 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 Nuneaton and Bedworth on siting and design. Listed buildings and conservation areas are the usual exceptions. We put the position to Nuneaton and Bedworth before a design is finalised.
- Has a school near CV11 already done this?
- 2 school schemes are on record in this postcode district, including a 290 kWp array at North Warwickshire College, Hinckley Road 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 Nuneaton?
- Nuneaton and Bedworth has 52 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register, with 20,018 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.