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LEG in practice: What the EKZ Regensdorf pilot is showing

LEG in practice: What the EKZ Regensdorf pilot is showing

Ivan Miric·

Since 1 January 2026, neighbours in Switzerland can share solar power across the public grid. That is new. Until now, self-consumption only worked behind a single meter or via an expensive private line.

To take the pressure off the launch, EKZ ran a pilot at the Stockenhof development in Regensdorf, a stress test under real conditions before the national rollout.

What an LEG is allowed to do

A Local Electricity Community (LEG) is not a virtual ZEV. It uses the public distribution grid and is therefore not self-consumption. Three rules are hard:

  • All members sit in the same municipality
  • In the same grid area
  • On the same voltage level (or the rebate drops to 20 % from 40 %)

Power traded inside the LEG gets a 40 % discount on the grid usage fee. That is where the economics come from.

What Regensdorf revealed

The pilot covered a development with several apartment buildings on a shared service connection. Three things stood out.

Smart meters are the bottleneck. Without quarter-hour metering at each connection, you cannot bill. EKZ rolls them out within three months on request, that deadline is now in law. If you are planning an LEG, file the smart-meter request before you draft the contracts.

Governance is work, not a form. An LEG needs a written agreement on price, distribution of surplus, and how members join or leave. In Stockenhof a simple model worked: solar at a fixed internal price between the feed-in tariff and the consumer tariff, plus a flat admin fee.

Billing does not scale by hand. Past eight parties, you need a metering and billing platform. Several have been live since Q1 2026. LEG-App, LEGhub, and offerings from the grid operators themselves.

When an LEG pays off for you

Three setups where the math works:

  • Multi-building development. One large rooftop, several consumers nearby. The classic case for housing co-ops and neighbourhood projects.
  • Commercial cluster. A factory with a big roof next to neighbouring businesses with daytime load. Self-consumption inside the cluster jumps quickly above 80 %.
  • Municipal initiatives. A communal PV plant on a school, hall, or depot supplying nearby properties.

Where Free State helps

We design the system, size the battery and inverters, and work with metering and billing partners that are LEG-ready. Under SolarFree, Free State also funds the install. LEG members pay a fixed kWh price with no capital outlay.

Talk to our team about an LEG for your property.

Sources: EKZ knowledge portal, Swissolar, Swiss Federal Office of Energy, Mantelerlass / StromVG. As of April 2026. Information without guarantee.