Switzerland has an estimated 1,860 local electricity communities six months after legalising them, averaging 7.2 members each
The interesting number is not 1,860 but 7.2. Community energy is normally argued about at the scale of a co-operative or a municipal utility: tens of megawatts, a board, a decade of development. Switzerland produced something much smaller and much more replicable in six months, a handful of neighbours on one low-voltage feeder sharing one roof's output at a price they agree between themselves, with the network operator reduced to a wires, metering and billing counterparty. That is the retail supply function moving to the edge rather than generation assets changing hands, and the fact that 78 per cent of participants generate nothing means these are not clubs for people who already own panels. The counterweight is in the government's own documents: the reduction was set at 30 rather than 60 per cent because the state accepts the arrangement saves the network almost nothing, and it wrote down that the shortfall lands on other customers' bills. On that accounting a local electricity community is a subsidy with a redistribution effect, granted to accelerate a model whose physical benefit is not yet demonstrated, and the volumes that would settle the question have not been published.
Swissolar surveyed the thirty largest Swiss distribution network operators, whose network areas hold roughly 71 per cent of the population, and counted 1,323 local electricity communities as of the end of June 2026. Combining that count with data from the LEGhub platform and extrapolating to the country gives an estimated 1,860 nationally. The communities are small: 7.2 participants on average, with regional averages ranging from 3 to 29. Of participants, 78 per cent only consume electricity, 13 per cent are prosumers and 9 per cent only produce. Distribution across the country is uneven, with numerous communities in some network areas and none in others.
A local electricity community, lokale Elektrizitätsgemeinschaft or LEG, lets neighbours sell self-generated electricity to each other across the public distribution network at a price they set themselves, while remaining ordinary grid customers for everything else. The model became available on 1 January 2026, when the Federal Council brought the second package of ordinances implementing the federal act on a secure electricity supply with renewable energy into force.
What the rules actually permit
The Federal Office of Energy's explanatory report of 19 February 2025, which accompanies the ordinance now in force, sets out the constraints, and they are tighter than "neighbours can trade".
Participants may be prosumers, storage operators, ordinary end consumers or producers, provided they are physically close together and connected at the same network level of the same distribution network operator. Nobody may belong to two communities. A community may contain one or more existing self-consumption groupings (Zusammenschluss zum Eigenverbrauch, ZEV) as members, and an electricity utility may contribute generation plant or storage and participate that way. Every participant must have a smart meter. To give the proximity principle effect, network use is confined to network levels 7 and 5, members must sit on one level and with one operator, and a community may extend at most across a single municipality. Cross-municipal communities are excluded even where one operator serves several municipalities.
The community sets the price of its internally generated electricity freely and may make its own rules for allocating network charges among members. The operator does the billing, the metering and the supply of residual electricity.
The discount is the policy, and it is deliberately small
Article 17e paragraph 3 of the Electricity Supply Act permits participants to claim a reduction of up to 60 per cent on the otherwise applicable network usage tariff, for internal electricity flows, meaning volumes generated inside the community and consumed inside it at the same time. Article 19h paragraph 1 of the Electricity Supply Ordinance sets that reduction at 30 per cent, measured against the applicable standard tariff, and only half of it is granted where more than one network level is used, because coordination costs for the operator rise. Residual electricity from the basic supplier gets no discount. Storage may not, over a billing period, deliver more electricity into the community than it draws from it, and if the ratio underpinning a community's formation falls below the ordinance's 5 per cent threshold the participants lose their entitlement to the discount altogether.
The explanatory report is unusually candid about why the number is 30 and not 60. It states that a community can produce only very small network cost savings, that some discount is nonetheless necessary to spread the model, and, in its impact section, that the reduced tariff means network usage costs for everybody else rise correspondingly.
Swissolar wants more. Its deputy chief executive Wieland Hintz used the survey to call for the grid fee discount to be maximised, for unnecessary fees to be removed, and for supply within a community to be allowed across municipal boundaries and across network levels.
Why it matters
The interesting number is not 1,860. It is 7.2.
Community energy is normally argued about at the scale of a co-operative or a municipal utility: tens of megawatts, a board, a decade of development. What Switzerland produced in six months is much smaller and much more replicable. A handful of neighbours on one low-voltage feeder share one roof's output at a price they agree between themselves, and the network operator is reduced to a wires, metering and billing counterparty. That is the retail supply function moving to the edge rather than generation assets changing hands, which is a different and rarer kind of transfer. The composition figure supports the point: 78 per cent of participants generate nothing, so these are not clubs for people who already own panels. They are a way to buy local electricity.
The honest counterweight is in the same documents. The federal government priced this transfer at 30 per cent of a network tariff precisely because it accepts the arrangement saves the network almost nothing, and wrote down that the shortfall lands on other customers' bills. On the state's own accounting, then, a local electricity community is a subsidy with a redistribution effect attached, granted to accelerate adoption of a model whose physical benefit is not yet demonstrated. Whether that is a good trade depends on volumes nobody has published, and the reason 1,860 is the number in every headline is that it is the only number anyone has.
Note also what the proximity rules foreclose. One municipality, one network level, one operator, no dual membership. These are the boundaries of the permission, and the most concrete thing Swissolar is asking for is that they be moved. The rules that make the model administratively tractable are the same rules that cap how far it can go.
What is still unknown
How much electricity has actually been traded inside these communities. Every figure available is a headcount. [NEEDS DATA: installed capacity inside communities, and kWh traded internally, for the first half of 2026.]
The 1,860 figure is an extrapolation, not a count. Only 1,323 were observed, in networks covering about 71 per cent of the population, and the report notes the geographic distribution is very uneven, which is exactly the condition under which extrapolating from covered to uncovered areas is least safe.
How many of the communities counted are conversions of existing self-consumption groupings rather than new formations, and how the two models now interact. The survey as reported does not separate them.
What internal price communities are setting, and how it compares with the operator's standard tariff and its feed-in rate. This is the number that determines whether the model is attractive without the discount.
The dissolution or failure rate, which after six months is unmeasurable but will be the test of whether a 7.2 person arrangement survives its first dispute.
[UNVERIFIED: the Swissolar study itself was not obtained and may be members-only. The participant counts, the range and the 71 per cent coverage come from trade press reporting of it and from the Swissolar release, not from the underlying tables.]
Sources
pv magazine, 7 September 2026, the extrapolated total, the surveyed count, the average and range and the participant split: https://www.pv-magazine.com/2026/09/07/switzerland-now-has-1860-active-local-electricity-communities/
ee-news.ch, 21 September 2026, carrying the Swissolar release, the 71 per cent population coverage, the Wieland Hintz quote and Swissolar's policy asks: https://ee-news.ch/a/swissolar-rund-1800-lokale-elektrizitaetsgemeinschaften-im-ersten-halbjahr-2026
Federal Office of Energy, explanatory report of 19 February 2025 on the amendment of the Electricity Supply Ordinance entering into force on 1 January 2026, source of the participation conditions, the network level restriction, the 30 per cent reduction and the cost-shift statement: https://pubdb.bfe.admin.ch/de/publication/download/11641
Federal Council media release of 19 February 2025 bringing the second ordinance package into force on 1 January 2026: https://www.admin.ch/gov/de/start/dokumentation/medienmitteilungen/bundesrat.msg-id-104172.html
ElCom FAQ on the implementation of the framework act, updated 16 June 2026, source of the storage restriction in article 19h paragraph 4 and the loss of the discount where the 5 per cent threshold is not met: https://www.elcom.admin.ch/dam/de/sd-web/weRgj22ICsTE/053-00004_20260616_AN_FAQ%20ES2050%20ab%20Mantelerlass_DE.pdf
Solarserver, 2 September 2026: https://www.solarserver.de/2026/09/02/schweiz-gruendet-1-860-lokale-stromgemeinschaften-leg-im-ersten-halbjahr-2026
Netzbetreiberinfo.ch: https://netzbetreiberinfo.ch/veranstaltungen/studien/swissolar-bereits-rund-1800-leg-in-der-schweiz
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