Specialist solar panels for schools in Evesham
Wychavon has 61 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.
140,200 kWh a year, modelled for a 160 kWp array on roughly 475 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 Evesham- 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 Worcestershire
A one kilowatt-peak array on a shallow pitched roof in Evesham models at 876 kWh a year, from modelled irradiation of 1,122 kWh per square metre in the plane of the array (EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss). That is within a few percent of our mean. Latitude is not the variable here. When the building is occupied is.
Scaled up, a 160 kWp array, sized to what the nearest school scheme on record applied for, 14 miles away at Cheltenham, models at about 140,200 kWh a year before shading, and needs roughly 475 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 36,000 kWh landing in July and August and roughly 6,900 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.
Evesham ranks 4 of 7 towns we cover in Worcestershire on modelled yield, against a national mean of 886 kWh per kWp. The county runs from 866 to 882, a spread of 16 kWh per kWp. Within Worcestershire 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 WR11
There is no school entry for the WR11 postcode district in the Renewable Energy Planning Database. The register is dependable for anything from a megawatt upward and incomplete below it, and a school array is usually nearer a fifth of a megawatt, so this says more about the threshold than about Evesham.
Look 14 miles out and there is one: Ladies College Swimming Pool, Malvern Road in Cheltenham, 160 kWp, applied for by Ladies College Swimming Pool, 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 Evesham generation curve
A Evesham 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 13.9 percent of the annual total, and it falls almost entirely inside the holiday.
Winter reverses it. December and January between them return 4.9 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 6.1 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 same mismatch repeats every day. Peak generation lands between eleven and three, the timetable ends shortly after, and by four the site is down to caretaking and cleaning. An annual consumption figure cannot show that, which is why we ask for the half hourly data instead.
None of that makes a Evesham 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 | 23 | 15 | 8 |
| Feb | 15 | 38 | 20 | 18 |
| Mar | 21 | 72 | 49 | 23 |
| Apr | 12 | 102 | 41 | 61 |
| May | 17 | 119 | 65 | 54 |
| Jun | 21 | 121 | 85 | 36 |
| Jul | 11 | 122 | 43 | 79 |
| 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 | 877 | 428 | 449 |
Grid connection through National Grid Electricity Distribution
Connections around Evesham 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 Worcestershire the planning database records 62 solar schemes totalling 506 MW, of which 6 are operational (REPD Q1 2026).
Wychavon schools, phase by phase
Wychavon has 61 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register teaching 14,779 pupils between them. Source: DfE Get Information About Schools.
The split is 53 primary, 7 secondary and 1 special, at an average of 242 pupils a site. A ratio of 7.6 to one tells you where the roof area is. It is not with the 53 primaries, which mostly offer a hall and a teaching block each, but with the larger sites that were built with a sports hall and a dining block attached.
Where a multi-academy trust holds several of those sites, surveying the estate in one pass beats taking a roof at a time. The design work, the connection applications and the procurement paperwork are the same job repeated, and a trust that runs them together gets a better answer on all three.
Book a roof survey at your Evesham school
Lenzie Consulting Ltd arranges roof surveys for schools across Worcestershire. 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.
Evesham school solar, answered
- Is there enough sun around Evesham for this to be worth doing?
- The model gives 876 kWh a year for every kWp installed at this latitude, so a 160 kWp array comes out at roughly 140,200 kWh a year before shading. It needs about 475 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 Evesham school waste its generation in August?
- 25.7 percent of the modelled annual output for Evesham 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 National Grid Electricity Distribution. We model all three against your half hourly data before an array is sized.
- Will the network around Evesham accept the export?
- National Grid Electricity Distribution is the distribution network operator for Worcestershire. 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 Evesham?
- Usually permitted development covers a roof array on a school, with prior approval from Wychavon 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 Evesham?
- Wychavon has 61 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register, with 14,779 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.