Specialist solar panels for schools in Birmingham
A 0 kWp array at Eden Boys Leadership Academy, Alum Rock Road is the nearest school scheme on the planning record, and it holds consent and is awaiting construction. We arrange the roof survey, model the output against the school's own half hourly consumption, and set out the funding routes.
854 kWh per kWp a year at this latitude, so a 470 kWp array, the size applied for at the nearest school scheme on record, models at about 401,400 kWh. Source: EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss.
Book a roof survey in Birmingham- 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 B8 have applied
The Renewable Energy Planning Database records 1 school and college solar scheme in the B8 postcode district. A secondary school, Eden Boys Leadership Academy, Alum Rock Road, applied for an unstated capacity roof mounted and the scheme holds consent and is awaiting construction. The applicant on record is Star Academies.
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 Eden Boys Leadership Academy, Alum Rock Road and not a survey of anyone's roof. What we know about the scheme above is only what the public planning record says.
Every one of them is a secondary school, which is worth knowing: a secondary site normally has a sports hall, a dining block and several flat roofs, which is where the usable area comes from.
| Site on record | Applicant on record | Size | Mounting | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Eden Boys Leadership Academy, Alum Rock Road | Star Academies | n/a | Roof | Awaiting Construction |
Solar for education buildings across West Midlands
A one kilowatt-peak array on a shallow pitched roof in Birmingham models at 854 kWh a year, from modelled irradiation of 1,093 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 4 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 470 kWp array, sized to what the nearest school scheme on record applied for, 5 miles away at Solihull, models at about 401,400 kWh a year before shading, and needs roughly 1,396 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 103,600 kWh landing in July and August and roughly 20,100 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.
Birmingham ranks 3 of 8 towns we cover in West Midlands on modelled yield, against a national mean of 886 kWh per kWp. The county runs from 839 to 868, a spread of 29 kWh per kWp. Within West Midlands 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 Birmingham generation curve
A Birmingham school roof generates most in the weeks its buildings are closed. 25.8 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 13.9 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 5.1 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.
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 Birmingham as anywhere else.
Daily shape compounds it. A school's load climbs from breakfast club, holds through the teaching day and falls away from about three in the afternoon, while generation is still strong until six in high summer. That is why we size against half hourly meter data rather than against annual consumption: the annual figure hides both problems.
The conclusion is not that a Birmingham 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.
- 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 | 37 | 20 | 17 |
| Mar | 21 | 70 | 47 | 23 |
| Apr | 12 | 98 | 39 | 59 |
| May | 17 | 115 | 63 | 52 |
| Jun | 21 | 117 | 82 | 35 |
| Jul | 11 | 119 | 42 | 77 |
| Aug | 0 | 101 | 0 | 101 |
| Sep | 20 | 78 | 52 | 26 |
| Oct | 17 | 48 | 26 | 22 |
| Nov | 21 | 28 | 20 | 8 |
| Dec | 15 | 20 | 10 | 10 |
| Year | 190 | 854 | 416 | 438 |
Birmingham schools, phase by phase
Birmingham has 439 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register teaching 198,904 pupils between them. Source: DfE Get Information About Schools.
The split is 318 primary, 89 secondary, 26 special and 6 further education, at an average of 453 pupils a site. 3.6 primaries per secondary is a mix weighted towards small sites. The roof area, and therefore most of the generation, sits with the 89 secondaries and the 6 further education sites.
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.
Grid connection through National Grid Electricity Distribution
National Grid Electricity Distribution operates the distribution network across West Midlands, 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 West Midlands the planning database records 195 solar schemes totalling 533 MW, of which 3 are operational (REPD Q1 2026).
Book a roof survey at your Birmingham school
We survey school and college roofs throughout West Midlands. We need the postcode, a rough roof area and your half hourly meter data if the trust has it. From that we model what the roof carries, what it generates against the timetable, and which of the funding routes actually suits a school of your size.
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.
Birmingham school solar, answered
- How much would a school roof near Birmingham generate?
- Modelled at 854 kWh per kWp a year, a 470 kWp array on a Birmingham school models at about 401,400 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 Birmingham?
- It goes somewhere, just not into the timetable. 25.8 percent of the Birmingham 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 Birmingham school?
- Applications go to National Grid Electricity Distribution, who run the network across West Midlands. 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 Birmingham 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 Birmingham on siting and design. Listed buildings and conservation areas are the usual exceptions. We put the position to Birmingham before a design is finalised.
- Has a school near B8 already done this?
- One school scheme is on record in this postcode district, including a 0 kWp array at Eden Boys Leadership Academy, Alum Rock 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 Birmingham?
- Birmingham has 439 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register, with 198,904 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.