From Individual Consumers to Energy Communities: A Techno-economic Assessment of Swiss Local Electricity Communities
Provides practical insights for policymakers and stakeholders in Switzerland on the performance of energy communities under the new legal framework.
This study assesses a regulation-compliant local electricity community (LEC) in Switzerland, finding that LEC participation increases local renewable utilization, reduces grid exports, and delivers economic benefits to both consumers and prosumers.
As energy communities move from policy design to implementation in Switzerland, understanding their performance in practice has become increasingly important. A techno-economic assessment of a regulation-compliant LEC is presented under the new Swiss legal framework in this study. A reference case without local electricity exchange is compared to a LEC scenario with internal electricity sharing. Results show that LEC participation increases local renewable utilization, reduces grid exports, and delivers economic benefits to both consumers and prosumers. A sensitivity analysis further indicates that internal electricity pricing plays a critical role in shaping trade-offs between overall efficiency and fairness in benefit distribution. This exploratory study provides practical insights to support informed decision-making and the future development of LEC in Switzerland.