The NHS estate
The hospitals' roofs, measured.
Hospitals are the strongest solar case in the public estate: they never close, so every kilowatt-hour generated on the roof gets used on site. Great British Energy’s first project is putting panels on around 200 NHS sites — here’s what the big hospital roofs we measured could do.
Between the 8 roofs here: roughly 27.6 MWp of unused capacity — around 9,026 homes' worth of electricity a year.
| # | Building | Roof capacity | Est. annual generation | Homes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Royal Derby Hospital Derby | 6.0 MWp | 4.8–5.9 GWh | ~1,982 |
| 2 | University Hospital of Wales, Cardiff Cardiff | 4.4 MWp | 3.7–4.4 GWh | ~1,498 |
| 3 | Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham Birmingham | 3.8 MWp | 3.0–3.6 GWh | ~1,225 |
| 4 | Queen's Hospital Romford Romford | 3.6 MWp | 2.9–3.6 GWh | ~1,206 |
| 5 | Southmead Hospital (Brunel Building), Bristol Bristol | 3.4 MWp | 2.7–3.3 GWh | ~1,117 |
| 6 | Pinderfields Hospital Wakefield | 2.4 MWp | 1.8–2.2 GWh | ~728 |
| 7 | Royal Stoke University Hospital Stoke-on-Trent | 2.3 MWp | 1.6–2.0 GWh | ~671 |
| 8 | Great Western Hospital Swindon | 1.7 MWp | 1.5–1.8 GWh | ~599 |
Full methodology, assumptions and cross-checks: how we measure. Includes solar data from Google.
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