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Registering for cost-covering feed-in remuneration (CRF)

swissgrid manages cost-covering feed-in remuneration (CRF) on behalf of the Federal Government.  It has been possible to register for this programme since 1 May 2008. To do so, you need to submit the official registration form to us.

The remuneration covers the feed-in fee for electricity from renewable energies:

  • Hydropower up to 10 megawatts
  • Photovoltaics
  • Wind energy
  • Geothermal power
  • Biomass

The following plants may be submitted for the programme:

  • Plants which were commissioned after 1 January 2006 (new plants)
  • Extended plants (plants which have increased in size)
  • Refurbished plants (plants which have been modernised)

The conditions for extended and refurbished plants are laid down in the revised Energy Ordinance. You can find further information for this purpose in the registration guides for the relevant sources of energy.

The registration process is divided into three parts:

  1. Registration: At the application stage, checks are carried out to determine whether a plant is essentially eligible for compensatory feed-in remuneration (CRF).
  2. Notification of project progress: If you receive a positive decision from swissgrid for a planned plant, you must notify us of the progress of the project by a certain deadline. Please use the project progress report form for this purpose. The deadline by which you must send us this notification is specified in our decision. Please ensure you keep to this deadline! If you fail to meet this deadline, you will lose your entitlement to funding, which will then be allocated to a different project. Note: notification must also be submitted for existing plants!  We need to record this additional data from your notification in our system. Otherwise, your project cannot be funded.
  3. Notification of commissioning: After submitting the project progress report, the applicant must commission the planned plant by the deadline specified in the decision. Please ensure we receive the notification of commissioning for the plant by the deadline specified. If this is not done, the applicant will lose its entitlement to funding, which will then be allocated to a different project. Note: notification must also be submitted for existing plants!  We need to record this additional data from your notification in our system. Otherwise, your project cannot be funded.

The following pages provide more detailed information on these three steps in the registration process, together with a list of the deadlines for the different energy sources (biomass energy, geothermal power, photovoltaic energy, small-scale hydropower and wind power). To help you, we have provided an online tariff calculator. The tariff calculator helps you to calculate your likely remuneration rate. Please note: the information provided by the online tariff calculator is not binding and confers no legal entitlement to a positive decision or a particular level of remuneration.

 

Legal basis (PDFs):

 

Media releases to the Cost-covering remuneration for feed-in to the electricity grid (CRF):

 

Further information from the Swiss Federal Office of Energy (SFOE):