The Days My Solar Beat the Grid — 2025

Not once in 2025 did the ground-level solar panels in my garden make more electricity across a day than I pulled from the grid. Not a single day — an honest zero, and worth owning as the baseline.

The strongest month was August, at 26 kWh of sun, but the grid stayed ahead every day of it. The data only starts in August and runs into the dark half of the year, well before the long days that tip the balance — a story the next year would tell very differently.

One honest asterisk. 17 of the days the panels “lost” were plunge days, when Agile prices went negative and it made no sense not to gorge on grid power. Of the 135 kWh I imported on those days, 47 fell in half-hours priced below zero — paid to me, not by me. Mostly the battery filling on free power, the rest the flat's always-on baseline draw earning on those slots rather than costing.

Back then, deciding when to pull from the grid was a manual job. There was no planner yet — each afternoon I read the day-ahead Agile prices and set the charges myself, each one fired by a Home Assistant diary entry acting as the trigger. A daily chore I am glad is long behind me: the charge planner that runs it all now came later.

I was not off-grid, and the totals keep it honest: about 72 kWh of sun against 939 drawn from the mains. The panels bided their time — the win-days were coming, just not in these months.

The months, side by side