Specialist solar panels for schools in Dudley
National Grid Electricity Distribution runs the network around Dudley, and on a school site their answer on export shapes the design as much as the roof pitch does. We look at the roof, the switchboard and the timetable in that order, then set the array size against what the site draws in term time.
312,700 kWh a year, modelled for a 370 kWp array on roughly 1,099 sqm of clear roof. That is the median size schools across West Midlands have applied for. Source: EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss.
Book a roof survey in Dudley- 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.
School rooftop solar across West Midlands
A one kilowatt-peak array on a shallow pitched roof in Dudley models at 845 kWh a year, from modelled irradiation of 1,083 kWh per square metre in the plane of the array (EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss). 5 percent below our mean puts Dudley at the weaker end of the range, which raises the premium on self consumption and lowers the value of anything that leaves the site.
Scaled up, a 370 kWp array, sized to the median array applied for at schools across West Midlands, models at about 312,700 kWh a year before shading, and needs roughly 1,099 square metres of clear roof. We use that size because it is what schools across West Midlands have applied for, not because it suits the arithmetic.
Spread across the year that is about 80,100 kWh landing in July and August and roughly 15,000 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.
Dudley ranks 7 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.
What the planning record shows around Dudley
The DY2 postcode district 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 Dudley.
The nearest education scheme on the record is 10 miles from Dudley, at Birmingham: 0 kWp at Eden Boys Leadership Academy, Alum Rock Road, applicant Star Academies, which holds consent and is awaiting construction. That is someone else's application, not ours, and it is here because it shows what West Midlands planning has already accepted at an education site. Source: Renewable Energy Planning Database, Q1 2026.
The summer holiday problem for a Dudley school
25.6 percent of the annual output modelled for Dudley 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. July is the single strongest month here at 13.9 percent of the annual total, and it falls almost entirely inside the holiday.
The inverse holds at the other end. December and January together return only 4.8 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 6.2 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.
Put the two calendars together and roughly 49 percent of a school's generation nationally lands on a session day, against about 71 percent for a business open every weekday. That gap is the whole difference between appraising a school roof and appraising any other commercial one, and it barely moves from town to town.
The daily curve does the same thing in miniature. Load drops sharply after about three o'clock, generation does not, so the last three hours of a summer afternoon are pushing into an empty building unless something absorbs them. Half hourly meter data is the only way to see how much.
None of that makes a Dudley scheme a bad one. It changes what the scheme should be: sized against the base load that runs whether or not the school is open, which on most sites is servers, comms, catering refrigeration, ventilation and hot water, with lettings, holiday clubs and summer works added on top. Where that base load is thin, the choices are storage, an export arrangement through National Grid Electricity Distribution, or a smaller array that consumes nearly everything it makes.
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 | 22 | 14 | 8 |
| Feb | 15 | 36 | 19 | 17 |
| Mar | 21 | 70 | 47 | 23 |
| Apr | 12 | 98 | 39 | 59 |
| May | 17 | 116 | 64 | 52 |
| Jun | 21 | 117 | 82 | 35 |
| Jul | 11 | 118 | 42 | 76 |
| Aug | 0 | 99 | 0 | 99 |
| Sep | 20 | 77 | 51 | 26 |
| Oct | 17 | 48 | 26 | 22 |
| Nov | 21 | 27 | 19 | 8 |
| Dec | 15 | 19 | 9 | 10 |
| Year | 190 | 847 | 412 | 435 |
Grid connection through National Grid Electricity Distribution
Connections around Dudley are handled by National Grid Electricity Distribution, 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 West Midlands the planning database records 195 solar schemes totalling 533 MW, of which 3 are operational (REPD Q1 2026).
How many schools Dudley has
Dudley has 108 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register teaching 47,247 pupils between them. Source: DfE Get Information About Schools.
The split is 79 primary, 19 secondary, 7 special and 3 further education, at an average of 437 pupils a site. At 4.2 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 Dudley, 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.
Start with the Dudley roof
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.
Questions governors ask us about Dudley schools
- How much would a school roof near Dudley generate?
- Modelled at 845 kWh per kWp a year, a 370 kWp array on a Dudley school models at about 312,700 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 Dudley?
- It goes somewhere, just not into the timetable. 25.6 percent of the Dudley 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 Dudley 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 Dudley 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 Dudley on siting and design. Listed buildings and conservation areas are the usual exceptions. We put the position to Dudley before a design is finalised.
- How many schools are there around Dudley?
- Dudley has 108 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register, with 47,247 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.