In June, as you probably won't have missed, we had a lot of sun. According to KNMI the counter came to 246 hours of sun compared to 214 hours in an average June month. And what you also won't have missed is that with all that sunshine it also got warm: very very warm indeed. From June 24 to 29 we experienced a fairly extreme heat wave. For solar panels, that heat is not ideal, because the warmer they get, the less electricity they produce.

During the hot period we also saw that the differences between the lowest and highest electricity spot price on a single day became very large: on June 24 that difference had even increased to more than one euro per kWh! Smart charging and discharging of home batteries immediately provides a considerable financial advantage on days like that.

Thunder and Lightning

In addition to all the beautiful weather, we also experienced very severe thunderstorms with lots of thunder and lightning. Lightning strikes can lead to tripping residual current circuit breakers, without people noticing. Zonnefabriek usually installs the inverters behind their own separate residual current protection: this means that the breaker can trip without affecting the rest of the electrical installation. But if the RCD of the solar panels trips, the production of solar energy also stops, until someone resets the breaker. Therefore always check whether your solar panels are still producing, for example in the app. If that is not the case, then the first thing to do is to check in the distribution panel that all switches are on (= up).

For the coming period, high temperatures and plenty of sun are once again forecast. If you go on vacation, just let the solar panels and home batteries do their work: with smart control you earn money witghout even having to stay at home! We wish you a wonderful summer with many benefits from your own Zonnefabriek.