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ElCom electricity tariffs smart home integration, free and open source

ElCom electricity tariffs integration for Gladys Assistant

Electricity tariff of every Swiss municipality (ElCom open data) for your energy contract.

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Prices your electricity consumption in Gladys at the tariff the Federal Electricity Commission (ElCom) publishes for your Swiss municipality: energy, grid usage, municipal charges, the federal grid surcharge and metering, in CHF, with or without VAT. The data is the ElCom open data served by LINDAS, the linked data service of the Swiss federal administration: no account, no key.

Unofficial integration, not affiliated with ElCom nor with the Swiss federal administration. Checked against the live ElCom data (Bern, Lausanne, a municipality with five grid operators), never tested inside a real Gladys energy contract.

What ElCom publishes, and what it does not​

For each municipality, grid operator, year and consumption profile, ElCom publishes the yearly average price of a kWh (Rp./kWh, without VAT) for a standard product and for the cheapest product of the operator. It publishes no peak / off-peak (HT/NT) split and no time windows: a double tariff shows only as its average over the profile. The integration therefore prices every kWh of a calendar year (Europe/Zurich time) at that average. The yearly fees (metering, basic fees) are already spread by ElCom on the yearly volume of the profile (Bern, H4 2026: metering 93.60 CHF / 4,500 kWh = 2.08 Rp./kWh); nothing is added on top. A home far from the volume of its profile is therefore priced less accurately: choose the profile closest to your yearly consumption.

The cheapest product is published since 2018 only, and by a part of the operators (about a third of the rows in 2026; none in Lausanne): when it is missing, the contract says so and asks for standard. ElCom writes a price of 0 ("Aucun", "kein Tarif vorhanden") when an operator has no tariff for a profile: the integration takes it as "no tariff" and says so, never as a price of 0.

The consumption profiles (ElCom categories):

ProfileTypical consumer
H12-room flat, 1,600 kWh/year
H24-room flat, 2,500 kWh/year
H34-room flat with electric boiler, 4,500 kWh/year
H45-room flat, 4,500 kWh/year (default)
H55-room house, 7,500 kWh/year
H65-room house with electric heating, 25,000 kWh/year
H75-room house with heat pump, 13,000 kWh/year
H8Large, highly electrified condominium, 7,500 kWh/year
C1-C7Businesses, from under 8 kW to 1,630 kW

Setting up​

  1. Install the integration: nothing to configure.
  2. In the integration page, click Find my municipality, type its name (or a 4-digit postal code): the button gives its municipality number (BFS) and the grid operators that serve it this year.
  3. In the energy settings of Gladys, create a contract on your electricity meter with the template Swiss municipality tariff (ElCom) and fill in:
    • Municipality number (BFS), e.g. 351 for Bern;
    • Grid operator number, only when several operators serve the municipality (empty otherwise);
    • Consumption profile (H4 by default), Product (standard or cheapest) and VAT (included adds the Swiss standard rate of the year: 8.1 % since 2024, 7.7 % from 2018 to 2023, 8.0 % before).
  4. Click Check my contracts: it shows the price of the year of each contract, or what is missing.

The connection status of the integration sums up the contracts (price of the year, date of the ElCom data) or the problem to fix (several operators and none chosen, an operator that does not serve the municipality, a profile or a product the operator does not have, a municipality ElCom has no tariff for).

How often the data is read​

ElCom publishes the tariffs once a year (the next year in early September) and corrects them now and then. The integration keeps what it read in its /data volume and:

  • reads the tariffs of a municipality for a year once and keeps them (40 municipality-years at most, the least recently used dropped first);
  • asks for the next year from 1 September only;
  • asks once a day the date ElCom last changed its data: when it is newer than a tariff of this year or the next in use, that tariff is read again (once per change);
  • reads again, once a week at most, a tariff of this year or the next in which a contract finds nothing (an operator, a profile or a product not published yet);
  • when ElCom has no tariff for a municipality and a year, or its answer cannot be read, asks again a week later at the soonest;
  • the Check my contracts button reads again the tariffs of the contracts (this year, and the next from September) read more than an hour ago, a missing one included;
  • sends one request at a time, two seconds apart at least, with its own User-Agent;
  • after a failure (no answer, timeout, rate limit, server error), pauses every request for 1 minute, doubled at each new failure up to 6 hours (a Retry-After from the server is honoured, within 6 hours);
  • keeps these dates across a restart; while /data cannot be read, it only asks for the prices Gladys needs.

Half hours Gladys already priced are not priced again after a correction: only the next ones use it.

Pricing and Gladys​

The template is "delegated": Gladys sends the half hours of a billing period, the integration answers one cost per half hour (with its components). When the tariff of a year is not available (not published yet, municipality unknown, LINDAS paused), the integration answers an error: Gladys stores no cost for these half hours (never a zero) and asks again at its next run. The current price shown on the dashboard is the price of this year; from September, the price from 1 January is shown too once read.

Limits​

  • No peak / off-peak split (see above); a dynamic tariff is priced at its published average.
  • Municipality numbers change when municipalities merge: a year before the merger has its tariffs under the old number. A contract spanning the change gets an error for the years the number does not exist.
  • A price above 10 CHF/kWh in the data is ignored (the bound of Gladys).

Data and credits​

Source: Federal Electricity Commission ElCom, electricity tariffs per grid operator and municipality, served by LINDAS (lindas.admin.ch), terms of use "Open use". See also the official site strompreis.elcom.admin.ch.

Configuration settings​

These are the settings ElCom electricity tariffs asks for in its configuration screen in Gladys.

SettingTypeRequiredDescription
Getting startedsectionNoNothing to set here. Create an energy contract in Gladys with the "Swiss municipality tariff (ElCom)" template and type your municipality number (BFS); the "Find my municipality" button below gives it, with the grid operators. The integration prices every kWh at the yearly average tariff ElCom publishes for your municipality and consumption profile (no peak / off-peak split: ElCom publishes none). Open data, no account, no key. Unofficial, not affiliated with ElCom. Checked against the live ElCom data, never tested inside a real Gladys energy contract.

How to install ElCom electricity tariffs in Gladys​

  1. In Gladys, open Integrations: ElCom electricity tariffs appears in the catalog, next to the native integrations, with a community badge.
  2. Click Install. Gladys pulls the Docker image (ghcr.io/lm1lc3n7/gladys-elcom:0.1.1), starts it in a sandbox isolated from the core, and generates the integration's interface (devices, discovery and configuration).
  3. Open the Configuration screen of the integration, fill in the settings, and save.
  4. You can also install it directly from its repository URL: https://github.com/LM1LC3N7/gladys-elcom.

ElCom electricity tariffs requires Gladys >=5.2.0. The catalog inside Gladys refreshes every hour, so a new version becomes available at most one hour after its release.

Not running Gladys yet? It is free and open source: follow the installation guide to get started.

About external integrations​

ElCom electricity tariffs is an external integration: a community integration packaged as a Docker container and published on GitHub, that Gladys installs in one click and runs in a sandbox isolated from its core. It is published and maintained by LM1LC3N7, not by the Gladys core team.

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