Specialist solar panels for schools in Kidderminster
25.6 percent of what a Kidderminster school roof makes arrives in July and August, which is when the buildings are shut. A survey here starts with the covering and the structure, then the incoming supply, then what the timetable actually draws.
25.6% of the modelled year lands in July and August, on a roof that returns 866 kWh per kWp a year. The worked example below runs at 280 kWp, the median size on the national planning record. Source: EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss.
Book a roof survey in Kidderminster- 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 PV for academy trusts across Worcestershire
A one kilowatt-peak array on a shallow pitched roof in Kidderminster models at 866 kWh a year, from modelled irradiation of 1,111 kWh per square metre in the plane of the array (EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss). Kidderminster sits 2 percent under our mean. Worth knowing, but not decisive: how well the array matches the timetable moves the answer further than the latitude does.
Scaled up, a 280 kWp array, sized to the median array applied for at schools on the national planning record, models at about 242,500 kWh a year before shading, and needs roughly 832 square metres of clear roof. We use the national median from the planning record rather than a round number, so the example stays anchored to what schools have applied for.
Spread across the year that is about 62,100 kWh landing in July and August and roughly 12,100 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.
Kidderminster ranks 7 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.
The planning position for Kidderminster schools
No school or college solar scheme appears in the DY10 postcode district in the Renewable Energy Planning Database. That is a reporting threshold rather than a verdict. The database records generating stations from one megawatt upward reliably and smaller ones patchily, and almost every school array is a fraction of that, so a roof full of panels on a Kidderminster secondary could be generating today without ever reaching it.
The closest recorded one is about 18 miles away at Birmingham: Eden Boys Leadership Academy, Alum Rock Road, a 0 kWp roof mounted array applied for by Star Academies, which holds consent and is awaiting construction. We were not involved in it. We cite it because it is a public record of what has cleared planning in this part of West Midlands. Source: Renewable Energy Planning Database, Q1 2026.
Why demand in Kidderminster falls as the roof peaks
The generating year and the school year are out of step in Kidderminster. July and August carry 25.6 percent of the modelled output (EU PVGIS v5.2), and the site is closed for most of those nine weeks. July is the single strongest month here at 14 percent of the annual total, and it falls almost entirely inside the holiday.
At the other end of the year the mismatch flips. Only 5 percent of output falls in December and January, the two months when a Kidderminster school is fully occupied and its heating and lighting are at their heaviest. The roof makes 6.1 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.
Across the country the arithmetic settles at roughly 49 percent of output on a session day, against about 71 percent for a weekday business. That figure hardly varies by location, which is why the local numbers that matter here are the yield, the roofs and what has already cleared planning nearby.
And the week has the same hole in it. Two days in seven the site is closed altogether, at no cost to the generation, which is part of why the session day share sits where it does. Weekend lettings are the one lever a Kidderminster school has over that, and they are worth counting properly.
That argues for a particular shape of scheme rather than against one. Size to the load that does not stop at the end of term, count in lettings, holiday clubs and summer works honestly rather than optimistically, and then decide whether storage or an export arrangement with National Grid Electricity Distribution pays for the surplus that is left.
We set out the full treatment of the school year against 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 | 71 | 48 | 23 |
| Apr | 12 | 101 | 40 | 61 |
| May | 17 | 118 | 65 | 53 |
| Jun | 21 | 120 | 84 | 36 |
| Jul | 11 | 121 | 43 | 78 |
| Aug | 0 | 101 | 0 | 101 |
| Sep | 20 | 79 | 53 | 26 |
| Oct | 17 | 48 | 26 | 22 |
| Nov | 21 | 27 | 19 | 8 |
| Dec | 15 | 20 | 10 | 10 |
| Year | 190 | 867 | 423 | 444 |
Grid connection through National Grid Electricity Distribution
National Grid Electricity Distribution 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 Worcestershire the planning database records 62 solar schemes totalling 506 MW, of which 6 are operational (REPD Q1 2026).
The school estate in Wyre Forest
Wyre Forest has 34 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register teaching 13,232 pupils between them. Source: DfE Get Information About Schools.
The split is 27 primary, 6 secondary and 1 special, at an average of 389 pupils a site. Read 4.5 primaries per secondary as a sequencing hint rather than a statistic. A primary is a single survey visit and a modest array; a secondary is several roofs of different ages on one site, and that is where both the area and the complications are.
A trust holding more than one of these sites should look at them together. Grouping the surveys turns the grid question, the funding question and the procurement route into one exercise rather than four, and it usually changes which roof goes first.
Send us the school postcode
We survey school and college roofs throughout Worcestershire. 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.
What Kidderminster trusts ask before a survey
- What would a 280 kWp array produce at a Kidderminster school?
- Yes, and the figure matters more than the sunshine. 866 kWh per kWp a year puts a 280 kWp array at around 242,500 kWh, on roughly 832 square metres of roof. The value of that depends on your term time load. Source: EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss.
- What happens to the electricity during the summer holidays in Kidderminster?
- Less is wasted than governors expect, but the figure is worth seeing: 25.6 percent of the year is modelled to arrive in July and August here (EU PVGIS v5.2), against a site running on holiday base load. Lettings, holiday clubs and summer works take some of it, storage takes more, and the rest is an export question for National Grid Electricity Distribution.
- Who do we apply to for export near Kidderminster?
- Only National Grid Electricity Distribution can answer it for your connection. What we can say is that a capped export limit rarely breaks a school scheme, because the array that suits a school is sized to the term time load rather than to the roof.
- Do we need planning permission in Wyre Forest?
- Often not, because panels on the roof of a school building usually sit within permitted development for non-domestic buildings. The exceptions are listed buildings, conservation areas and arrays that project too far above the roof plane, and larger schemes still need prior approval from Wyre Forest. We confirm it either way.
- How many schools are there around Kidderminster?
- Wyre Forest has 34 open state-funded schools and colleges on the DfE register, with 13,232 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.