2022 was a massive anomaly — the European energy crisis pushed the average daily peak to €0.450/kWh, with even the cheapest 3h windows averaging €0.256. Since 2023 prices have fallen and stabilized into a tighter, more predictable rhythm.

Avg daily peak (1h): 2021 €0.319 · 2022 €0.450 · 2023 €0.325 · 2024 €0.293 · 2025 €0.297 · 2026* €0.289.   Avg daily low (3h): 2021 €0.240 · 2022 €0.256 · 2023 €0.222 · 2024 €0.183 · 2025 €0.178 · 2026* €0.169. (* = Jan–May)

The same two measures, month by month, so you can see the seasonal shape inside each year. Red = monthly avg of the daily highest 1h peak. Green = monthly avg of the daily lowest 3h window. Pick a year:

Monthly figures derived from the yearly daily-extremes data, following the observed seasonal shape (expensive winters, cheap solar summers). 2026 covers Jan–May only.

The single most important finding. The cheapest hour of the day has fundamentally moved — from the dead of night to the middle of the day — as solar flooded the grid. Use the year buttons to watch it happen.

While cheap hours moved, expensive hours stayed put. Across all 5.5 years the highest 1h peak lands squarely in the early evening — the dinner-time rush when solar drops off just as everyone gets home, cooks, heats, and plugs in EVs.

Peak-hour frequency aggregated across 2021–2026. A consistent evening peak (17:00–19:00) dominates every year, with a smaller secondary morning bump around 08:00–09:00.

Four rules of thumb that fall straight out of the data — a battery or smart scheduler automates all of them.

These recompute from whatever you load on the Prices page — your own slice of the data, not the aggregate.

Green = typically cheap (charge). Red = typically expensive (discharge / avoid import). Load 1+ years for the clearest pattern. This is the live version of the solar-shift chart above.

Load a range on the Prices page first — this chart computes automatically from real data.

The core idea in one picture. The orange line is the hourly price. Without a battery your grid draw follows your normal pattern (grey) — including the costly evening peak. With a battery (green) you charge in the cheap window and discharge through the peak. Drag the sliders to see it update live.

Illustrative day from the typical Dutch hourly shape, scaled to your slider values and the live price spread (loaded: default €0.092/kWh). Summer charges at midday solar; winter charges overnight on wind — the seasonal shift from your Trends page. Annual projection = daily saving × 365, capped by what the battery can physically cycle.

Defaults: a mid-size home battery, 300 cycles/yr, typical Dutch household usage. The arbitrage value uses the average daily price spread from your loaded range (loaded: none yet). Battery hardware cost is excluded — this estimates the annual operating benefit; divide your install price by it for a rough payback.

Battery arbitrage / yr uses the same formula as “Projected saving / yr” in the peak shaving chart (capacity × efficiency × cycles × spread), so those two numbers always match. The Total annual benefit is higher because it adds usage-shift savings (30% of yearly usage moved to cheaper hours) and solar export uplift on top. Estimates only — verify against your supplier’s invoice before deciding.

The reference year-on-year figures. These are the exact annual averages from the source analysis.

The monthly and hourly reference data are modelled — calibrated so each year averages back to the exact annual figures above, following the observed seasonal and daily shapes. They're faithful in shape but are not exact per-month/per-hour extractions. Load live data for precise values.

Source basis: published Dutch market analysis 2021–2026, plus the user-supplied daily-extremes and hourly-frequency charts. Modelled values live in the ARCHIVE_MONTH and ARCHIVE_HOUR tables in this file's source.