Electricity prices: industrial units

Switzerland's supply of electricity to end users is secured by approximately 700 companies. Many of the electricity enterprises in towns and cities are also responsible for supplying water and gas. In some cantons and municipalities, a single vertically integrated company is responsible for these supply tasks, while in other cantons a variety of companies share this responsibility.

Network operators
The ten biggest Swiss network operators alone account for around 40 percent of the total quantity of electricity supplied to end consumers in the distribution network. If we look at the figures for the biggest 50 network operators, we can see that they account for around three-quarters of the supplied energy. The next 50 biggest operators together supply one-tenth, while the remainder supply onesixth of the energy consumed by end users.

Electricity price
The electricity price consists of three components:

• generation costs,
• grid costs,
• taxes and duties.

Generation costs are generally understood as the costs for producing electricity. They vary depending on the type of electricity generation and on the power station. Whether and how the external costs, state subsidies and taxation flow into the calculation is frequently politically controversial and hence not always easy to answer.
The grid costs reflect the costs for the transport of the electricity over the grid from the power station to the customer. The basic rule is that the further the electricity is transported, the higher the grid costs. Hence, the share of grid costs is higher for private households than for industrial companies or major distributors, which are located in closer proximity to the high voltage grid than the wall sockets of the private households at the lower grid levels. This also has an effect on the total price. For industrial customers, for example, who consume 150,000 kWh per year, the price lies at an average of 17.5 cents/kWh and for industrial customers who consume 1.5 million kWh per year at an average of 15 cents/kWh.
The third component of the electricity price is the taxes and duties: During recent years, their significance has increased considerably. The levy for the promotion of renewable energies (KEV) introduced in 2009, has been gradually increased from 0.6 cents/kWh to 1.1 cents/kWh, and will be 1.3 cents/kWh in 2016. Within the framework of the Energy Strategy 2050, the statutory upper limit for the KEV will be increased to 2.3 cents/kWh. The phased increase in the water rates (2011 and 2015) and the levying of a renaturation contribution since 2012 also contribute a further 0.35 cents/kWh to electricity costs. Together with the already existing range of taxes and duties, concessions, water rates and requirements stipulated by the federal government, cantons and municipalities, these taxes and duties account for roughly one third of the electricity price. This is not always immediately obvious since depending on the method of presentation, a portion of the taxes and duties is added to other price components (e.g. water rates are added to the energy component).
However, if all the taxes and duties are actually listed under this category, the electricity price for a kilowatt-hour (kWh) of household electricity in 2016 is split approximately equally between the three components.
On average, the overall tariffs for households remained constant at 20,4 cents per kWh (cf. showing data based on the example of consumer profile H4).

Surveillance
ElCom is responsible for supervising wholesale electricity trading and the electricity sector, including Swissgrid, with respect to network use tariffs, electricity tariffs for fixed end consumers, supply security, status of the electricity networks and allocation of capacities in the event of congestion at the country’s borders.