What would a 500 kWp array produce on a farm near Ilford?

Yes, and the figure matters more than the sunshine. At 909 kWh per kWp a year, a 500 kWp array on a Ilford holding models at around 455,000 kWh. What changes the answer is how much of that the farm uses itself. Source: EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss.

Which network operator handles the connection around Ilford?

Applications go to UK Power Networks, who run the network across Greater London. On a farm the incoming supply matters as much as their answer: a single phase supply caps what can be installed whatever the roof would take.

Solar panels for farms in Ilford

Around Ilford the constraint is rarely the roof. It is the incoming supply and what the network will accept back. What decides a farm scheme here is the state of the roof sheets and the incoming supply, which is why the survey looks at both before anyone sizes an array.

909 kWh per kWp a year at this latitude, so a 500 kWp array models at about 455,000 kWh. Source: EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss.

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Drawing Ilford unit

Roof 96 x 62 m

Array 500 kWp

Yield 455,000 kWh/yr

Scale 1:500 / Rev A / Greater London

Illustrative layout for a unit of this size. Your own figures come from the roof survey.

Ilford / Greater London

A modern steel framed agricultural building with its roof covered in solar panels, tractor and trailer in the yard, fields beyond — Industrial stock of the kind we survey across Greater London.

Agricultural rooftop solar across Greater London

What a farm roof near Ilford generates

Modelled irradiation at this latitude is 1170 kWh per square metre a year in the plane of a shallow-pitched roof, which works out at 909 kWh for every kWp installed (EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss). That sits within a few percent of the mean across the areas we cover, so what decides the scheme is your own demand pattern rather than the latitude.

No solar scheme is recorded in this postcode district in the planning database. On a farm that usually means nothing has been built above the reporting threshold rather than that nothing has been built, because a roof array on a shed rarely appears in it.

FIG. 1 What a Ilford roof makes, month by month

Jul produces 5.7 times what Dec does on the same roof. A 500 kWp array here models at about 455,000 kWh across the year, but it arrives unevenly, which is why we size against your summer daytime load and then look at whether storage is worth adding for the shoulder months.

Monthly figures as a table

Month	kWh per kWp	500 kWp array
Jan	25	12,500
Feb	39	19,500
Mar	73	36,500
Apr	105	52,500
May	120	60,000
Jun	125	62,500
Jul	126	63,000
Aug	106	53,000
Sep	84	42,000
Oct	52	26,000
Nov	31	15,500
Dec	22	11,000

Source: EU PVGIS v5.2

FIG. 2 Ilford against the rest of Greater London

Hammersmith910
Hounslow910
Richmond910
Barking909
Ilford909
Battersea908
Bromley908
Chelsea908
Havering908

Ilford ranks 10 of 50 towns we cover in Greater London on modelled yield, against a national mean of 886 kWh per kWp. The county runs from 847 to 987, a spread of 140 kWh per kWp. On a 500 kWp array that is about 70,000 kWh a year between the strongest and weakest town in the county.

Bars are zero based, so length is proportional to the figure. Where a county is flat, that is the finding: location is not the lever, consumption is. Source: EU PVGIS v5.2, modelled per town

Grid connection through UK Power Networks

UK Power Networks 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.

Book the survey

Send us the postcode

Tell us where the unit is and roughly how big the roof is. We come back with what it can carry, what it would generate against your consumption, and the three ways to pay for it.

Lenzie Consulting Ltd arranges the survey and passes your details to our MCS-certified installation partner so they can quote.

Questions about solar in Ilford

What would a 500 kWp array produce on a farm near Ilford?: Yes, and the figure matters more than the sunshine. At 909 kWh per kWp a year, a 500 kWp array on a Ilford holding models at around 455,000 kWh. What changes the answer is how much of that the farm uses itself. Source: EU PVGIS v5.2, SARAH3, 10 degree pitch, 14 percent system loss.
Which network operator handles the connection around Ilford?: Applications go to UK Power Networks, who run the network across Greater London. On a farm the incoming supply matters as much as their answer: a single phase supply caps what can be installed whatever the roof would take.