Sunny and dry: that basically sums up April 2026, as most of you undoubtedly noticed. According to the Dutch meteoroligical organisation KNMI, we were blessed with 258 hours of sunshine, which is considerably higher than the long-term average of 196. Incidentally, last year April was also very sunny, so there shouldn't be much difference between this past April and last year's April regarding the yield of your solar panels.

Soot on the panels

The drought was evident from the many wildfires all over the country. Solar panel owners near 't Harde and the other fire hotspots may have been able to see the effect of the smoke clouds on their yield charts. Deposited soot can also settle on the panels, but hopefully that will have been washed off again by the rain by now.

Full batteries

We've now also just had the first day of the year with significantly negative electricity prices on the EPEX spot market: May 1st was exceptional! Lots of sun and lots of wind combined with little demand: that can certainly lead to sharp drops in power prices! Have a look at this article to read what you can and cannot do about it. All the home batteries (and many of the electric cars) in the Netherlands were undoubtedly completely charged up at the end of the afternoon on May 1st.

Brief revival in imbalance

May 1st was also a good day for 'imbalance': the trading index, which has usually remained far below 100 lately, suddenly shot up to 282. This means that the batteries trading on the imbalance market could suddenly earn a lot of money. By the way, the imbalance trading index was even higher on April 6th, namely 407. However, on average, the month of April only gave a trading index of 44.

We're entering the period of very long days and lots of sunshine, so let's try to make the most of it. With home batteries to store surplus power, a smart EV charging station and a heat pump boiler that heats the domestic hot water with solar power, you will get a long way. And guess what? We just happen to have all of that in our portfolio: we're looking forward to your email or phone call!