Understand
The vocabulary of local electricity.
LEC, ZEV, network rebate, feed-in tariff: fourteen terms are enough to read a Swiss electricity bill and understand what a local electricity community changes for you.
- Local electricity community LEC
- A grouping of electricity producers and consumers located within the same network perimeter, sharing the renewable electricity produced locally. The consumer pays less for local electricity than their distribution system operator's tariff, and the producer sells it for more than the feed-in tariff. LECs have been permitted in Switzerland by the revised LApEl since January 2026, with no change of supplier and no new connection.
Sources: Wikidata
- Self-consumption grouping ZEV
- The arrangement that predates LECs, in force since 2018, letting the occupants of a single property consume electricity generated on site together. A ZEV stops at the plot boundary and replaces each dwelling's individual connection with a single metering point. A LEC goes further: it crosses plots and uses the operator's public network, leaving existing meters untouched.
- Distribution system operator DSO
- The company responsible for operating, maintaining and developing the local electricity network that carries power to the end consumer. Around 600 DSOs share Swiss territory, each setting its own network usage tariffs and its own buy-back price. It is the DSO, not the energy supplier, that determines whether a LEC is feasible at a given address and what it is worth.
Sources: Wikidata
- Electricity Supply Act LApEl
- The federal act of 23 March 2007 (SR 734.7) governing Swiss electricity supply and network access. Its revision, in force since January 2026, creates the legal basis for local electricity communities and for the network usage rebate that makes them viable. The implementing ordinance (OApEl, SR 734.71) sets the numbers.
Sources: Fedlex
- Energy Act LEne
- The federal act of 30 September 2016 (SR 730.0) setting Switzerland's renewable energy targets and the rules for remunerating electricity fed into the network. In particular it governs the minimum remuneration the network operator owes the producer, and therefore the benchmark above which a LEC becomes worthwhile.
Sources: Fedlex
- Self-consumption
- The share of the electricity produced by an installation that is consumed on site rather than fed into the network. It is the decisive economic variable of a solar installation: every self-consumed kilowatt-hour is worth the purchase price avoided, well above the feed-in tariff. A LEC raises collective self-consumption by placing with neighbours what one site cannot absorb itself.
- Feed-in tariff
- The price at which the network operator buys back the electricity a producer feeds into the network. Each DSO sets its own, and it varies widely from one region to the next. For installations above 30 kW the guaranteed minimum remuneration can fall to zero, which makes selling locally through a LEC far more attractive than feeding in.
Sources: Wikidata
- Network usage rebate
- A reduction on the network usage component granted to electricity traded inside a LEC, because it travels only a short distance across the network. Art. 19h OApEl caps the rebate at 40 % where the exchange stays within the perimeter of a single transformer, and at 20 % at substation level. It applies only to the eligible part of the network tariff, excluding system services, the electricity reserve, the federal surcharge and levies.
- Solar surplus
- Electricity produced by a photovoltaic installation at a moment when the site cannot consume it, typically at midday, at weekends and during holidays. With no local taker, that surplus goes onto the network at the feed-in tariff, sometimes zero. It is the raw material of a LEC: one producer's surplus becomes a neighbour's local consumption.
- Photovoltaics PV
- The technology that converts solar radiation directly into electricity using semiconductor cells. An installation's capacity is expressed in kilowatt-peak (kWp) and its annual output in kilowatt-hours. In Switzerland a residential installation produces roughly 900 to 1100 kWh per kilowatt-peak per year, depending on region and orientation.
- Prosumer
- A party that both produces and consumes electricity, for example a household with solar panels. In a LEC a prosumer is handled on both counts: they buy the local electricity they are short of and sell the surplus they do not consume. It is the profile with the highest gain, since the two effects add up.
Sources: Wikidata
- Metering point
- The physical location where electricity consumption or feed-in is measured, identified in Switzerland by a unique 33-character code beginning with CH. The code appears on the electricity bill and on the meter. It is the key that ties an address to a LEC, because it is the code, not the account holder's name, that identifies the connection to the network operator.
Sources: Wikidata
- Smart meter
- A communicating electricity meter that records consumption and feed-in in short intervals, usually 15 minutes, and transmits them to the network operator. Those load curves are what make a LEC calculable: without them there is no way to establish what share of a member's consumption was covered by local production at the same instant. The rollout is under way in Switzerland, with an 80 % target for metering points set by the LEne.
Sources: Wikidata
- Kilowatt-hour kWh
- The unit of electrical energy, equal to the consumption of a 1000-watt appliance running for one hour. Swiss tariffs are quoted in centimes per kilowatt-hour (ct/kWh). A Swiss household of four consumes roughly 4000 to 5000 kWh a year.
Sources: Wikidata
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