Solar panel weather September 2024
How was the weather in the past month for the solar panels? What does that say about the yield? And how does it compare to previous years?September 2024 was pleasantly varied: a few days of sunshine, followed by a few changeable days, then sunshine again, and so on throughout the month. There were cool periods but also sunny periods, such as the wonderful but brief 'Indian summer' from 17 to 23 September. According to the Dutch meteorological organisation KNMI, we had a total of 182 hours of sunshine in September, which means that the month can be described as 'sunny'. The long-term average for September is 159 hours of sunshine, although in recent years we've always stayed above that number.
Hours of sunshine in September from 2015-2024 (source: KNMI)
Usually, the province of Zeeland in the Southwest is the place with the most hours of sunshine in a month, but not this time! Westdorpe (in Zeeland) was the place with the least sunlight (157 hours) while the winner this time was up North in Groningen, namely Nieuw Beerta with 204 hours.
Large spread in hourly prices
In the coming months, we will be faced with increasingly shorter days and undoubtedly many periods of wind and rain. We won't be seeing the typical spring and summer phenomena of high grid voltage and negative electricity prices in the next few months. Incidentally, in September the all-in electricity price on the spot markets did not go into negative territory at any time, so there was once again no reason to switch off inverters (and it seems that this will certainly not be the case after 2027!). However, on some days there was a nice 'spread' between the highest and lowest prices for electricity, for example on September 3: on that day the lowest hourly price was 26 cents per kWh and the highest 57 cents. With an intelligently controlled battery you can profit from this by charging at low rates and discharging at high rates and thus earning 31 cents per kWh battery capacity just like that. The bigger the spread, the greater the profit!
On September 3rd there was a big difference between the highest and lowest price on the spot markets for electricity (source: energyzero)
From October onwards, the wind will take over from the sun and will be responsible for the largest share of renewable energy in the Netherlands, especially now that new wind farms have been added in the North Sea. However, your solar panels will still be able to make a nice contribution to your power consumption: keep an eye on the yield and check our website for help if the monitoring fails!
