CKW Offers New Revenue Opportunities for Photovoltaic Systems

CKW is opening up new ways to earn money with photovoltaic systems. The Central Swiss energy company is launching a flexibility market nationwide for PV systems starting at 150 kilowatt-peak (kWp). In the future, CKW also plans to allow households with solar panels, heat pumps, or electric cars to participate.

Those who generate electricity will soon be able to earn money also by responding flexibly to the needs of the power grid. Axpo subsidiary CKW is now making this flexibility market accessible to PV systems starting at 150 kWp. This corresponds roughly to the size of solar systems on commercial, agricultural, or industrial buildings.

To make this happen, CKW partnered with Hive Power and its platform FLEXO. Together, they built CKW Flex Solar: a product that lets PV system operators across Switzerland participate in the flexibility market for the first time.

How It Works

The principle is simple. When there is excess electricity on the grid, FLEXO automatically reduces the output of participating solar systems. The interruption lasts from a few minutes to two to three hours. CKW then compensates producers for the lost generation at a rate above the regular electricity price and feed-in remuneration. What used to be a grid constraint becomes an additional source of income.

The entire process runs automatically via FLEXO, so operators don’t need to do anything. The platform handles real-time grid signals, asset control, and remuneration tracking in the background.

“The energy transition requires flexible systems that stabilise the grid. The more solar systems that participate, the better we can balance fluctuations in the power grid. At the same time, solar systems become more economical for producers,” says Angela Krainer, Head of Business.

A Win for Producers and the Grid

The benefits go both ways. Solar producers earn more from their systems, especially in summer when generation peaks are highest. And the grid gets the flexibility it needs to absorb more renewable energy without destabilising.

This kind of distributed flexibility is exactly what Switzerland needs as solar capacity continues to grow. Every time a participating system responds to a grid signal, it helps keep the network stable and creates room for even more renewables to come online.

What Comes Next

CKW Flex Solar currently serves PV systems from 150 kWp. But the threshold is set to drop to 10 kWp in the future, opening the programme to households with rooftop solar, heat pumps, and electric vehicles. FLEXO is built to scale in that direction, aggregating assets across different technologies and locations into a single, manageable flexibility pool.

It is a first step toward a system in which millions of small devices across Switzerland collectively support grid stability, and every solar panel, heat pump, and electric car plays an active role in the energy transition.