In a photovoltaic project, self-consumption is the part of the electricity produced that is used locally by the building or site instead of being sent straight to the grid. It is a way of reading how the project works in practice. According to the logic used by SuisseEnergie and grid operators, it is not a subsidy, not a battery requirement, and not an automatic collective setup.
What does self-consumption actually mean?
Self-consumption means local use of the electricity generated on site. In other words, the solar power is consumed where it is produced: by the building itself, its equipment, or its immediate electrical needs. It describes an operating reality, not a legal form or a funding mechanism.
That distinction matters. When people talk about self-consumption, they are talking about what happens to the electricity after it is produced. The term says nothing, by itself, about whether the project includes storage, whether surplus energy is exported, or whether several users share the same installation.
A practical way to think about it is this: self-consumption is the share of production that matches local demand at the right moment. The more demand is aligned with production, the higher the share of self-consumed electricity.
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Why does this term change how a project is read?
Self-consumption changes the reading of a solar project because it shifts attention from installed capacity alone to how energy is actually used. A system is not judged only by how many panels it has, but by how much of that output can be absorbed on site, when consumption happens, and what happens to the surplus.
That has three concrete consequences:
- it influences whether a battery makes operational sense;
- it changes the balance between local use and grid injection;
- it affects the project’s economic logic, because locally used electricity and exported electricity do not play the same role in the analysis.
This is why the term is more than vocabulary. It is a project design tool. If you focus only on feed-in, you risk missing the central question: how much of the solar production can be used directly where it is generated?
Official Swiss guidance treats self-consumption as a practical use of locally produced electricity, not as a separate administrative product. The network operator then frames the conditions for injection and connection. So self-consumption is best understood as a layer of project operation, sitting between generation and grid interaction.
| Concept | What it means | What it is not |
|---|---|---|
| Self-consumption | Electricity produced and used on site | Not a battery, not a subsidy |
| Grid injection | Surplus electricity exported to the network | Not local use |
| Battery storage | A way to shift energy in time | Not the definition of self-consumption |
| Collective self-consumption | Several users share production | Not implied automatically |
Once you read the project through this lens, you can ask better questions: when is demand highest, which loads can be shifted, and how much of the production profile is likely to be used directly? That is the practical value of the term.
What is self-consumption most often confused with?
Self-consumption is most often confused with battery storage, because both concepts are linked to using solar electricity locally. But they are not the same. A battery is only one possible way to increase or organise local use. Self-consumption is the outcome or share of electricity used on site; storage is one of the tools that can affect that outcome.
It is also often confused with a collective configuration such as a shared building arrangement or a broader local energy community. That is a different layer of interpretation. Collective use changes who consumes the electricity, while self-consumption describes whether the electricity is consumed locally rather than exported immediately.
To keep the distinction clear:
- Self-consumption answers: where is the electricity used?
- Battery storage answers: when is the electricity used?
- Collective setup answers: who uses the electricity?
Those three questions are related, but they are not interchangeable. A project can self-consume without a battery. It can inject surplus electricity without losing the logic of self-consumption. And it can be collective without self-consumption being the defining feature of the term.
Quick clarifications
Does self-consumption mean there is no grid injection? No. A project can self-consume part of its production and still inject the surplus into the grid.
Does self-consumption require a battery? No. A battery can improve or reshape local use, but it is not part of the definition itself.
In practice, what should you remember?
If you are evaluating a solar project, treat self-consumption as a reading key, not as a device. It tells you how the production is absorbed locally and how much of the system’s value depends on on-site use. That is why the term matters early in the project discussion, before technical and financial choices are frozen.
For a project owner, the useful question is not only “How much can this system produce?” but also “How much of that production can be used where it is generated?” That is the core of self-consumption, and it is what makes the term so important in solar project design.