Swissgrid's finances, 2011-2025
What the Swiss transmission grid operator owns, spends and pays its people, in orders of magnitude. Fifteen annual reports, read by LLM agents, checked by scripts.
Swissgrid runs the Swiss high-voltage grid: 6,700 km of lines, 12,000 pylons, 126 substations. It took the grid over from its former owners in January 2013 and has owned it since. I am working on probabilistic forecasting of grid imbalance, and I wanted to know what balancing costs next to everything else Swissgrid pays for. The annual reports contain the answer, spread over 15 PDFs of 100 to 200 pages each. This page is the condensed result.
All amounts are in CHF million unless stated, from Swissgrid's own accounts (Swiss GAAP FER, single entity). A reference such as "AR2025 p44" means annual report 2025, PDF page 44. The method is described at the bottom.
Where the money goes each year
Four flows, same scale. Investment grows steadily. Balancing swings by a factor of eight. Staff cost doubles. Bought-in maintenance is small, and has been since the contracts were put out to public tender in 2015.
Yearly flows, CHF m
Gross investment, narrow balancing cost, personnel expenses and bought-in grid maintenance. Click a legend entry to hide or show it.
Investment was about 165 m a year in 2013-2016, about 200 m in 2017-2021 and about 300 m in 2022-2025. A third of the 2.9 bn invested since 2013 was paid from cross-border auction proceeds, which the accounts deduct from the asset cost. So the gross figures are the ones that measure building activity. No report splits investment into new build and replacement.
Maintenance bought from third parties was 61-63 m in 2013-2014, then 14 m in 2015, the first year of contracts tendered under public procurement law (AR2015 p41). It was back at 31 m in 2025. Swissgrid's own broader figure is "around CHF 50 million a year" (AR2023 p6). Maintenance done by Swissgrid's own staff sits in personnel expenses and cannot be isolated.
Balancing: paying for reserves, paying for activations
Balancing has two parts. Control power provision pays power plants to hold capacity in reserve. Control energy pays for the reserve actually activated when production and consumption diverge. Until 2023 the capacity part dominated. In 2024 the cost moved from capacity to activated energy.
Balancing cost, CHF m
Procurement costs for control power provision and control energy (2019 as restated in AR2020)
The reports explain single years, not trends. For 2021-2023: "persistently high electricity prices caused by geopolitical developments and the limited power plant capacities" (AR2022 p28). For 2024, the capacity fall gets no reason beyond "lower costs for control power provision" (AR2024 p25). The energy rise does get one:
"Deviations between the forecasts provided by energy producers and their production in real time are having an impact on system frequency. Swissgrid had to request large volumes of control energy at short notice several times during the reporting year." (AR2024 p3)
Activated energy volumes fell 12-13% in 2024 while their cost rose 214%. For 2025, the fall is attributed to "lower market prices, optimised procurement processes and the use of the 'Optimizer Autopilot' for control energy" (AR2025 p27). Swissgrid credits that tool with saving around EUR 20 million in 2025, about a tenth of the control-energy line.
One open question: balance-energy income (what balance groups pay for their imbalances) was 296 m in 2025 against 177 m of control-energy cost. It exceeds that cost every year, by a factor of 1.3 to 2.9, and the reports do not explain why.
The grid on the balance sheet
Property, plant and equipment is on the books at 6.2 bn at cost and 2.4 bn net. Lines are 3.0 bn at cost and 1.1 bn net, substations 2.3 bn and 0.6 bn. Per unit, at cost: about 450k CHF per km of line and 18 m per substation. The reports give no replacement value.
Property, plant and equipment, CHF m
Acquisition cost and net book value at 31 December. Net book value is cost minus accumulated depreciation.
Net book value has hovered at 2.2-2.5 bn since 2016, while the share of cost already depreciated crept from 54% to 61% (73% for substations). Two-thirds of the lines date from before 1980 (AR2025 p19). Gross capex runs at 1.5 times depreciation, but once the auction-financed part is netted out, the ratio is 1.05. The grid is being maintained in book value, not grown.
The large balance-sheet swings of 2021-2024 were not the grid. They were timing differences, costs to be recovered through future tariffs: a net 1,367 m at the end of 2023, of which about 44% came from the new power reserve. Financial liabilities peaked at 2,536 m the same year.
People: more of them, same pay
Personnel expenses rose from 62 m in 2011 to 156 m in 2025. The growth is in headcount: average full-time equivalents went from 479 in 2014 to 837 in 2025, while the cost per FTE stayed at 179-188k CHF, nominal, once the one-off pension and restructuring charges of 2013 and 2015 are excluded.
Average full-time equivalents
2011-2013 are a proxy; 2014-2017 include 28-40 FTE on Energy Act orders, moved to Pronovo AG in 2018
Personnel cost per average FTE, CHF k
Nominal, excluding the one-offs of 2013 (19.1 m) and 2015 (7.5 m)
The reasons the reports give for the growth (AR2023 p170-171): the Winter Reserve Ordinance, bringing in-house functions "previously performed by external service providers", stronger system operations, digitalisation. No report splits staff between those who build or maintain the grid and those who operate the system. The closest is 812 technical versus 168 corporate staff in 2025. External service providers worked an estimated 2.07 million hours at Swissgrid's sites in 2025, against 1.92 million hours for all own staff (AR2025 p164-165).
All the numbers
The series behind the charts, plus equity, debt, procurement costs, turnover and profit. Profit is regulated: the allowed return on capital is 3.98% for 2025 (AR2025 p39).
Breaks in the series to keep in mind
- 2011-2012: Swissgrid operated the grid but did not own it, so 2012 to 2013 is a change of company, not of activity.
- 2013: net turnover (179 m) includes a court-ordered reversal of 341.5 m of ancillary-service revenue for 2009-2010 (AR2013 p30). Personnel expenses include a one-off pension contribution of 19.1 m (AR2013 p56).
- 2015: personnel expenses include a restructuring provision of 7.5 m (AR2015 p42).
- 2016: procurement costs contain 417.4 m owed to the former owners under ElCom's ruling of 20 October 2016 (AR2016 p27). Grid-transfer money, not balancing.
- 2018: staff working on Energy Act orders moved to Pronovo AG (AR2018 p16).
- 2019: control power and voltage support as restated in AR2020 (59.0 m moved).
- Auction proceeds: since 2013, asset cost and net book value are net of investment paid from auction proceeds, 866 m cumulative to 2025.
What the reports do not say
- a replacement or market value of the grid;
- an investment split into new build and replacement, or single-project costs;
- staff or staff cost by business unit or activity;
- total MW contracted for reserves, their prices, or a split into primary, secondary and tertiary reserve;
- why capacity cost fell in 2024;
- what the "Lines" asset class contains, and whether the 6,700 km are route or circuit length;
- why the stated pylon count fell from 15,000 (AR2011-12) to 12,000 (from AR2013).
How the numbers were obtained
- Extraction. LLM agents (Claude Sonnet) read the 15 English reports and extracted 16,491 numbers and 1,945 qualitative facts, each with its page and the verbatim line it comes from.
- Automatic checks. A script verified that every quote is on its page and contains the value. 1,120 arithmetic identities hold (income-statement subtotals, balance-sheet totals, asset schedules by row and column, opening equals previous closing). The 40 failures are explained: breakdown lines without a key, one-off items, a sign typo printed in AR2021, rounding. One extraction error was found and corrected.
- Review. Four thematic sections were written, each reviewed by an adversarial agent, then a final fact-check pass. About 25 table cells were spot-checked by hand on the PDF pages, all correct.
- Limits. The checks prove that each number is on its page and that the tables add up. They do not prove that every label went to the right series. Only the English versions were processed; the German version is the legally binding one. Percentages, ratios and per-unit values are my arithmetic on printed figures.
Sources: Swissgrid annual reports 2011-2025, downloaded from swissgrid.ch/publication. Statements of Swissgrid Ltd as a single entity under Swiss GAAP FER. The statutory accounts differ (2025 PPE 2,288.6 m versus 2,411.6 m, AR2025 p72); do not mix them.