Solar panels for schools across West Midlands

The school estate in West Midlands

West Midlands has 1,097 open state-funded schools and colleges teaching 510,817 pupils, spread across 7 local authorities. Source: DfE Get Information About Schools.

Of those, 807 primary, 206 secondary, 67 special and 17 further education. The phase mix is what sets the usable roof area across a county: secondary sites and colleges carry the sports halls, dining blocks and flat roofs, while primaries offer a hall and a teaching block each and suit arrays sized to the base load.

Solar for education buildings and what a West Midlands roof models

Modelled yield is not flat across West Midlands. Coventry comes out at 868 kWh per kWp a year against 839 at Wolverhampton, a spread of 29 kWh per kWp. On a 370 kWp school array that difference is about 10,730 kWh a year, which is worth checking before anyone accepts a county-wide saving figure. Source: EU PVGIS v5.2.

Every town page below carries the same arithmetic for that town, including the share of the year that lands in July and August, which is the number a governing body should see before a saving figure.

Solar PV for academy trusts on the West Midlands planning record

The Renewable Energy Planning Database records 5 school and college solar schemes in West Midlands, across 3 of the towns we cover. They include Eden Boys Leadership Academy, Alum Rock Road at Birmingham, City College, Swanswell Street at Coventry and Tudor Grange, Solihull Dingle Lane - PV Solar Panels at Solihull. The median array applied for is 370 kWp.

We were not involved in any of those schemes. They are public planning records, and they are here because what a local authority and a network operator have already accepted for one school is the best available guide to what they will accept for the next. Source: Renewable Energy Planning Database, Q1 2026.

Connections across the county run through National Grid Electricity Distribution. Anything above 3.68 kW per phase needs a G99 application, and on a school site the incoming supply and the size of the existing main switchboard are often the real constraint rather than the roof.