Your postcode.
Your electricity price.
Why the difference is 4.3×.

Before you look up your municipality: the map you’re about to see is not a technical curiosity. It’s a picture of a market that was never designed to be fair. Each coloured shape represents a monopoly. The darker the colour, the more that monopoly charges.

Start with the number that stops people cold: the cheapest municipality in Switzerland pays 10.56 Rp./kWh. The most expensive pays 45.88 Rp./kWh. Both are Swiss households. Both are connected to the same national transmission grid operated by Swissgrid. The difference is entirely down to which local operator your building happens to sit under — a decision made decades ago that you have never been asked to revisit.

Why does your postcode determine your electricity price?

Switzerland’s electricity market was designed in an era before solar, before digital metering and before anyone imagined that a household might want to choose where its energy comes from. The Elektrizitätsversorgungsgesetz (ElG) assigns each geographic area to a single distribution network operator. That operator sets tariffs for all households within its territory. Households cannot switch.

The tariff has three main components: energy (what the operator pays to buy or produce electricity), grid usage (the cost of local infrastructure), and levies (national fees, municipal taxes, the federal grid surcharge). We decode every line item on your electricity bill in a separate guide. Each of these varies by operator based on their procurement strategy, infrastructure age, ownership structure, and local political decisions about how much profit the utility should return to the municipality.

The result: two households 2 kilometres apart, on either side of a cantonal border, can face electricity bills that differ by hundreds of francs per year for exactly the same consumption. ElCom monitors this, publishes the data, and can intervene if prices are “unjustifiably high” — but it has a high bar for intervention and rarely forces reductions.

The extremes: 10.56 Rp. vs 45.88 Rp. in the same country

Zwischenbergen in Upper Valais benefits from direct access to hydropower generated a few kilometres up the valley. Their operator has low grid costs, cheap local production, and a small but self-sufficient supply structure. At the other end, Kestenholz in Solothurn (45.88 Rp./kWh) is served by a small operator with aging infrastructure, procurement contracts signed at peak 2022 energy prices, and a limited customer base over which to spread fixed costs.

Neither household did anything to deserve their price. It was assigned by geography.

The canton picture: Zug and Nidwalden lowest, Bern most variable

At canton level, Zug and Nidwalden are the cheapest in Switzerland — both benefit from low-cost hydro access. Cantons with high proportions of hydro or nuclear supply in their local network tend to have lower and more stable tariffs. Urban cantons like Geneva and Basel-City sit in the mid-range. The most volatile canton is Bern, which has the largest number of independent small operators and therefore the widest spread of prices within a single political unit.

What LEG 2026 means if you’re in an expensive municipality

The LEG framework doesn’t change your grid operator or your base tariff. What it does is add an option that didn’t exist before: you can now receive a portion of your electricity from a local solar producer at a price negotiated within the community — always lower than the standard grid rate.

If you’re in an expensive municipality, this matters more. A 2 Rp./kWh saving at the national median saves you CHF 90/year on 4,500 kWh. The same 2 Rp./kWh saving in a municipality where you pay 40 Rp./kWh is the same absolute amount — but it represents a 5% reduction off a much larger bill. And as communities grow and cover more of your consumption, that 2 Rp. saving applies to an increasing share of your annual usage. Calculate your exact savings based on your consumption.

For producers in expensive municipalities, the incentive is even stronger. Selling locally at 25 Rp./kWh instead of receiving ~7 Rp./kWh in feed-in tariff turns an uneconomic-looking investment into a compelling one. Which means more panels get installed. Which means more community supply. Which means more consumers pay less.

How to join — regardless of your postcode

UpGrid operates across multiple grid areas. As long as there’s a community forming or active in your area, you can register. If there isn’t one yet in your specific municipality, your registration puts you on the list for when supply reaches your network node.

1. Register online — 2 minutes. No paperwork, no provider cancellation, no installation.

2. Get matched — UpGrid connects you to the nearest active community in your grid area.

3. From 2026 — community electricity billed separately at the guaranteed lower rate.

4. Your grid operator stays — they cover anything the community can’t supply. No gaps in power.

5. Savings scale over time — as more producers join, the community covers more of your consumption.

Frequently asked questions

Can I switch electricity providers in Switzerland?

For households on basic supply (which is the vast majority of Swiss residents), no — you cannot choose your electricity provider. Your local distribution network operator is assigned by geography and holds a regulated monopoly. Large industrial consumers above 100,000 kWh/year have been able to access the open market since 2009, but household liberalisation has repeatedly been deferred. The LEG framework is not liberalisation — it is a structured way to access locally-produced solar within the existing monopoly framework.

Why is electricity so much cheaper in Valais than in Bern?

Valais has exceptionally large hydropower capacity relative to its population — the Grande Dixence and other Alpine dams produce more electricity than the canton consumes, much of which is exported. Local operators can procure at cost rather than market price, keeping tariffs low. Bern has a more fragmented grid with many small independent operators, more variable procurement and historically higher infrastructure investment — all of which feeds into higher average tariffs.

Does joining a LEG energy community affect my existing electricity contract?

No. Joining a LEG community does not change or cancel your existing supply contract with your grid operator. You continue to receive electricity from your provider for the portion the community cannot cover. You simply receive an additional bill from the community for the electricity it did supply — at a lower rate. The two systems run in parallel. Your provider is legally required to accept this arrangement under the revised StromVG. Learn more about the differences between LEG, ZEV and vZEV energy community models.