What applies in Switzerland

600 watts, a notification duty, and the plug question

Plug-in solar systems up to 600 W are permitted but must be notified to the local grid operator.

Inverter

max. 600 W AC

Grid operator notice

required

Plug type

T13 / T23, not Schuko

Switzerland did not raise the limit to 800 W; 600 W of inverter output remains the ceiling. An 800 W device imported from Germany must be throttled accordingly.

Connection uses a Swiss T13 or T23 plug. German Schuko plugs do not fit Swiss sockets, and a bare adapter is not a clean solution.

Notifying the grid operator is mandatory and usually free. Some utilities additionally require the work to be carried out by an authorised person.

Export remuneration: every grid operator decides for itself

There is no national tariff. What you receive for exported electricity is set by your local utility — and the national spread is more than threefold.

Typical range

4–16 Rp./kWh

Set by

around 600 grid operators

National flat rate

does not exist

This is the single most consequential number in the whole calculation, and the one no calculator can know for you. Look up your utility's tariff before ordering a system.

Two neighbouring municipalities can differ by ten centimes per kilowatt hour. On a typical system exporting 4,000 kWh that is 400 francs a year — over twenty years, more than the price of a battery.

Since the revision of the Energy Act a minimum price applies, based on avoided costs. It does not remove the spread, it only limits it from below.

In practice: where remuneration is high, a large array pays. Where it is low, almost only self-consumption counts — which moves storage and load shifting to the front of the queue.

A one-off payment instead of an ongoing tariff

Switzerland supports photovoltaics with a single investment contribution rather than a running feed-in tariff.

Base contribution

flat per system

Capacity contribution

per kWp, degressive

Administered by

Pronovo AG

The one-off payment typically covers a meaningful share of the investment and is paid after commissioning. Unlike the German scheme it creates no recurring income — after that, the economics rest entirely on self-consumption and the local export tariff.

Systems with little or no self-consumption can apply for the high one-off payment, which compensates for the reduced benefit.

Many cantons and municipalities add contributions of their own.

Grouping for self-consumption (ZEV)

Several parties on one or neighbouring plots may group together and settle solar electricity internally.

For apartment buildings this is the central lever: instead of releasing surplus at the low export tariff, the owner sells it to the tenants at a price that must sit below the grid tariff but may sit well above the export rate.

The grouping needs an internal metering concept and an agreement with the tenants; towards the grid operator it appears as a single customer.

A carbon levy on fuels — with redistribution

Fossil fuels carry a steering levy. A large part flows back to the population through health insurance and pension contributions.

The levy is considerably higher than the German carbon price and makes heating oil and gas correspondingly more expensive. Households that burn little fossil fuel get back more than they pay in — that redistribution is the actual incentive.

For the heat pump calculation this means the cost advantage over gas or oil is structurally larger in Switzerland than in Germany, even though electricity costs about the same.

Heating replacement is regulated by the cantons

Rules and subsidies for replacing a heating system are set by the cantons, not the federal government.

Of every topic on this page, this is the most regionally fragmented. Checking your canton's rules is essential.

The cantons' model energy regulations are a template that each canton adopts or amends independently. In several cantons a fossil system may only be replaced if a renewable solution is demonstrably uneconomic.

Subsidy amounts also differ substantially by canton, and sometimes again by municipality. A single national figure would mislead — the calculator uses an average that you should override.

Households cannot switch supplier

Swiss households cannot choose their electricity supplier freely — you buy from the local basic supplier.

Market opening

from 100,000 kWh/year

Households

basic supply

In Switzerland the tariff calculator therefore compares product variants and consumption scenarios of your utility, not competing suppliers.

Only large consumers above 100,000 kilowatt hours a year may switch supplier. Households pay the tariff of their local utility, which is reviewed by ElCom.

What remains selectable are product variants from the same utility — green power surcharges, or dual tariffs with peak and off-peak periods. That, rather than switching supplier, is where the Swiss optimisation potential lies.