CEL: starting a local electricity community in your neighborhood

Until now, sharing your solar electricity stopped at your own plot: beyond it, you had to feed into the grid and settle for the buyback rate. Since the beginning of 2026, the local electricity community (CEL) changes the picture: neighbors in the same area can exchange their electricity through the public grid, at a price they set among themselves.

What makes the CEL interesting

Electricity shared in a CEL travels over the grid, but its grid-use fee is reduced: a 40% discount when the electricity stays at the same grid level, 20% when it changes level. Between the buyback rate (what feeding in earns) and the supplier’s rate (what the neighbor pays), there is room for a price that benefits both sides.

Who can take part

A CEL brings together producers and consumers from the same area: the owner whose roof produces more than the house consumes, the neighbor without a usable roof, a business that consumes during the day exactly when solar produces. No need for shared lines or construction work: the infrastructure already exists, it is the grid.

The steps, in order

1. Bring together the participants in the area and agree on the internal price.
2. Form the community and declare it to the grid operator.
3. Measure and allocate: every shared kilowatt-hour must be attributed to a consumer.
4. Bill each participant, month after month.

Steps 3 and 4 are the real recurring work, and that is exactly what SOLARSPLIT Community Connect automates for both kinds of community, the self-consumption community (RCPv) as well as the CEL.

Where to start

If the neighborhood has no production yet, everything starts with a roof: the free simulation establishes the potential of yours. For sharing within a single building, the right framework is the RCPv: the two are compared in RCPv and CEL explained simply, and the apartment building case in detail in RCPv in an apartment building.