Solar panel weather December 2024 plus annual review
How was the weather in the past month and the past year for the solar panels? What does that say about the yield? And how does it compare to previous years?We thought that last year December was exceptionally gloomy, but it now appears that things can be even worse: December 2024 was so dark that only 29 hours of sunshine were measured over the month. This makes it the worst month for solar panels since the start of our solar panel weather report some 12 years ago!
December was dramatic: the fewest hours of sunshine ever measured in a solar panel weather report (source: KNMI)
Longest period without sun in 35 years
Last month we had the longest 'sunless' period in the past 35 years: for eleven consecutive days there was not a single ray of sunshine in a large part of the country. The graph of the KNMI below shows this: yellow bars mean sunshine. From 9 to 19 December there is not a single day of yellow to be seen.
From December 9 to 19 there was not a single ray of sunshine in De Bilt (source: KNMI)
The misery wasn't over yet, because instead of low-hanging clouds, we had fog at the end of the month. No, December 2024 was decidedly a month to quickly forget. So let's take a look at the entire year of 2024; how did that go in terms of sunshine?
The year 2024: definitely not an outlier
Unfortunately, even taken as a whole, 2024 wasn't all that great. We have to go back to 2013 to find a year with less sunlight than this past year. After January, spring was bad with a very dark February, and for the rest, only August and September were actually still somewhat bearable. With 1747 hours of sunshine according to the KNMI, it was a slightly less sunny year than average, but especially compared to the past two years, it was really disappointing.
Also on an annual basis, 2024 lagged behind previous years (source: KNMI)
You have probably already heard that 2024 broke records in terms of temperature, not only in the Netherlands but also worldwide. The earth continues to warm up and without all those solar panels and wind turbines it would probably have been a lot worse. Despite the moderate sunlight, all the solar panels in the Netherlands taken together still produced 14% more electricity in 2024 compared to 2023. This is of course mainly due to the fact that many more solar panels were added, especially in the first half of the year.
Green energy continues to increase
We are still a long way from a fully renewable electricity supply, let alone a fully renewable energy supply (including heat and transport). But last year was the first year in which more than half of our electricity came from green sources: the transition to green is now well underway.
The coming weeks are expected to bring a little more sun and a lot of wind. And at Zonnefabriek we have planned a large number of installations again, of solar panels, home batteries, heat pumps and charging stations: let's fire up the new year with fresh energy!
