Specialist solar panels for schools in Leeds
Leeds has 280 state-funded schools and colleges, and most of them are buying electricity in exactly the hours their own roofs could be making it. We start with the roof build up and the age of the covering, because across a school estate that is usually what decides which block goes first.
365,200 kWh a year, modelled for a 440 kWp array on roughly 1,307 sqm of clear roof. That is the size applied for at the nearest school scheme on record. Source: EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss.
Book a roof survey in Leeds- 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 for education buildings across West Yorkshire
A one kilowatt-peak array on a shallow pitched roof in Leeds models at 830 kWh a year, from modelled irradiation of 1,060 kWh per square metre in the plane of the array (EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss). 6 percent below our mean puts Leeds 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 440 kWp array, sized to what the nearest school scheme on record applied for, 23 miles away at Ripon, models at about 365,200 kWh a year before shading, and needs roughly 1,307 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 95,700 kWh landing in July and August and roughly 16,800 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.
Leeds ranks 4 of 8 towns we cover in West Yorkshire on modelled yield, against a national mean of 886 kWh per kWp. The county runs from 811 to 846, a spread of 35 kWh per kWp. Within West Yorkshire that difference is small enough to ignore: where the building sits is not what decides this scheme, your consumption pattern is.
School solar on record near LS2
The LS2 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 Leeds.
Look 23 miles out and there is one: Ripon Grammar School, Clotherholme Road in Ripon, 440 kWp, applied for by Solar Options for Schools Limited, which holds consent and is awaiting construction. None of our doing. It is a public planning record, and the nearest evidence available of how an application like yours is treated around here. Source: Renewable Energy Planning Database, Q1 2026.
Term dates against the Leeds generation curve
A Leeds school roof generates most in the weeks its buildings are closed. 26.2 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. May is the strongest single month here at 14 percent of the annual total, which is still term time, and that works slightly in your favour against towns whose curve peaks in July.
Winter reverses it. December and January between them return 4.6 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 6.4 times as much in May as it does in December, and August alone outproduces December by about 5.7 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.
Inside the day it happens again. The roof is still at three quarters of its peak at four in the afternoon, by which time a Leeds school is largely empty, so the hours that look best on a generation chart are the worst on a consumption one.
None of that makes a Leeds 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 Northern Powergrid, 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 | 20 | 13 | 7 |
| Feb | 15 | 36 | 19 | 17 |
| Mar | 21 | 68 | 46 | 22 |
| Apr | 12 | 97 | 39 | 58 |
| May | 17 | 116 | 64 | 52 |
| Jun | 21 | 112 | 78 | 34 |
| Jul | 11 | 116 | 41 | 75 |
| Aug | 0 | 102 | 0 | 102 |
| Sep | 20 | 75 | 50 | 25 |
| Oct | 17 | 45 | 25 | 20 |
| Nov | 21 | 26 | 18 | 8 |
| Dec | 15 | 18 | 9 | 9 |
| Year | 190 | 831 | 402 | 429 |
Grid connection through Northern Powergrid
Northern Powergrid is the network operator here, and their answer on export capacity shapes the design. Any commercial array above 3.68 kW per phase connects under G99 rather than G98, and the application fixes what you are allowed to push back onto the network. If the local network is tight, limiting export rarely breaks the case here: most of the generation is consumed on site while the building is working.
Across West Yorkshire the planning database records 170 solar schemes totalling 550 MW, of which 8 are operational (REPD Q1 2026).
Leeds schools, phase by phase
Leeds has 280 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register teaching 128,430 pupils between them. Source: DfE Get Information About Schools.
The split is 221 primary, 45 secondary, 9 special and 5 further education, at an average of 459 pupils a site. At 4.9 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 Leeds, 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.
Book a roof survey at your Leeds school
Lenzie Consulting Ltd arranges roof surveys for schools across West Yorkshire. Send the school postcode and a rough idea of the roof area, and the last twelve months of half hourly meter data if the school holds it. We come back with what the roofs can carry, what they would generate against your own consumption, and the funding routes open to a school.
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.
Leeds school solar, answered
- Is there enough sun around Leeds for this to be worth doing?
- The model gives 830 kWh a year for every kWp installed at this latitude, so a 440 kWp array comes out at roughly 365,200 kWh a year before shading. It needs about 1,307 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 Leeds school waste its generation in August?
- 26.2 percent of the modelled annual output for Leeds 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 Leeds accept the export?
- Northern Powergrid is the distribution network operator for West Yorkshire. 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 Leeds?
- Usually permitted development covers a roof array on a school, with prior approval from Leeds 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 Leeds?
- Leeds has 280 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register, with 128,430 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.