Why energy teams choose Sympheny
Sympheny helps engineering firms, utilities, municipalities, and developers turn slow manual planning workflows into fast, repeatable, investment-grade energy concepts.
One model. Every carrier. Every technology you decide is in scope.
Energy planning is still too slow for the decisions it needs to support
Most energy planning workflows depend on manual data preparation, spreadsheet handoffs, and consultant bottlenecks. That makes scenario iteration slow, limits the number of options teams can seriously evaluate, and makes it hard to build the confidence that infrastructure investment decisions require.
Manual data prep consumes planning time
Hours spent cleaning GIS data, aligning tariffs, and building demand profiles by hand are hours not spent on engineering judgement. Projects take longer than they need to.
Too few scenarios get evaluated
When each scenario iteration is costly and slow, teams compare two or three options instead of ten. The best solution can get missed before a decision is made.
Justifying decisions is harder than finding them
Regulators, clients, and finance teams expect rigorous documentation. Outputs assembled from spreadsheets are harder to audit, explain, and update when assumptions change.
Purpose-built for multi-energy planning — not adapted from something else
Data and flexibility — without the trade-off
Most planning tools force a choice: bundled data with a black-box model you can't change, or full flexibility with no data to start from. Sympheny ships with technology cost, performance, and building energy data ready to run a scenario today — and lets you override every assumption, define your own technologies, and adjust performance curves when the project demands it. Your project data is yours alone: it is never used to train Sympheny's models.
Built for multi-energy system planning
Sympheny models heat, electricity, cooling, hydrogen, and storage together in one optimisation. Most tools handle one carrier. Sympheny handles all of them simultaneously.
Optimisation engine, not a spreadsheet
A physics-based MILP solver evaluates 50,000+ technology and capacity combinations per run, optimising across seven objectives — life-cycle cost, CO₂, self-sufficiency and more — simultaneously. You get defensible optima, not hand-tuned estimates.
Scenario comparison built in
Run multiple scenarios in parallel. Compare on cost, CO₂, self-sufficiency, and risk across the same baseline model — without rebuilding anything.
One tool covers the full project lifecycle
Project acquisition, strategic planning, detailed design, scenario comparison, and stakeholder-ready outputs — in one platform. GIS site view, Swiss and EU benchmark data, tariff structures, and in-app reporting (printable from the browser) are included. No stitching three packages together to cover one project.
Research-backed and production-proven
Developed from Empa / ETH Domain research in multi-energy optimisation, network-aware planning, and computational scaling. Used in 70+ real projects across Europe, the USA, and China — including the Nanoverbund thermal micro-grid in Basel (operational since 2023, with IWB), the entire 78-district energy roadmap for the City of Bern, and a multi-year city-wide strategy for IBC Chur. This is not a prototype.
Sympheny vs. the alternatives
Spreadsheets don't scale to multi-energy complexity
Spreadsheet models are flexible, but they are hard to audit, difficult to share, slow to re-run, and nearly impossible to compare at scenario level. When a project has six energy carriers, 30 technology options, and three future demand assumptions, a spreadsheet becomes a liability — not an asset. Sympheny makes the same analysis repeatable, transparent, and faster. Every run is documented, every scenario is comparable, and the model can be re-used as inputs evolve.
BG Engineers ran six Pareto-optimal hydrogen variants in under 10 minutes — a multi-site sector-coupling analysis that would have taken weeks in spreadsheets.
Read case studyOpen-source rigour, with people behind it
Open-source energy planning tools can be flexible and methodologically transparent, but most require programming skills, have steep learning curves, and ship without commercial support, onboarding, or a maintained roadmap. When a project deadline slips because a key contributor moved on, there's no one to call. Sympheny gives you the same kind of rigour — peer-reviewed MILP optimisation, transparent assumptions, exportable models — plus documented onboarding, web-based support with a 48-hour response window, API documentation, a 24/7 user guide, and a product roadmap shaped by paying customers. Backed by a Swiss team with PhDs from ETH Zürich and TU Delft.
Built for the speed of early-stage planning, not the friction of detailed engineering software
Established desktop tools (HOMER, TRNSYS, NEPLAN, TOP Energy) are powerful for what they were built for — micro-grid sizing, hydraulic detail, electrical fault analysis. But they were designed for detailed engineering, not for the speed pre-feasibility, planning, and tendering require. Workflows are rigid, interfaces are dated, technical expertise is required, and teams end up buying and training on multiple packages to cover one project. Sympheny is web-based, usable by non-specialists, and built on the same engineering-grade primitives the best detailed-engineering tools rely on — Gurobi optimisation and Esri GIS — but exposed through a workflow that covers the full project lifecycle in one platform, from acquisition through strategic planning, scenario comparison, and client-ready reporting.
Internal tools are expensive to build and fragile to maintain
Building a multi-energy optimisation tool from scratch requires a team of energy modellers, software engineers, and data specialists — plus years of validation and testing. Most organisations that have tried discover that the ongoing maintenance burden exceeds the initial build cost. Sympheny provides a maintained, continuously improved platform backed by Empa research and a full engineering team. You get a product roadmap, onboarding support, and a solver that has been validated against real projects — without the overhead of owning it.
What Sympheny is not
Not a real-time energy management system
Sympheny is a planning tool, not an operations platform. It does not monitor live energy flows, control building systems, or replace BMS/EMS software like Siemens Desigo or Schneider EcoStruxure. It is used before infrastructure is built — to decide what to install and why.
Not a wholesale market modelling tool
Sympheny does not model national grid capacity, long-run electricity price curves, or policy scenarios at a regional or country level. Tools like Aurora, PLEXOS, or EnergyPLAN cover that space. Sympheny works at the district, campus, city, and site scale — where infrastructure decisions are made.
Overkill for single-technology feasibility
Sympheny can model a solar-only or EV-charging scenario — but if that's all you need, it's more than the job requires. The platform is built for projects where multiple energy carriers interact — heat, electricity, storage, gas, hydrogen — and where the right answer depends on how the system fits together.
Energy planning is getting harder, not easier
Electrification, heat networks, distributed storage, dynamic tariffs, carbon targets, and tightening regulation are all hitting planning teams at once. The number of technology combinations that need to be evaluated is growing. The timeframes for decisions are compressing. And the quality of evidence that regulators, clients, and finance teams expect is rising.
Teams that can evaluate more scenarios faster — and document their reasoning rigorously — are in a better position to advise, win projects, and commit to the right infrastructure. Sympheny is built precisely for that shift.
More energy carriers to model — electricity, heat, H₂, storage, mobility
More stakeholders requiring documented, auditable reasoning
Shorter project timelines with higher quality expectations
Carbon targets that require long-range scenario analysis, not point estimates
Tariff structures changing faster than static models can track
What Sympheny gives back to your team
We don't publish a fixed ROI figure — every team's workflow and billing structure is different. What we can say is where the time goes in conventional workflows, and where Sympheny changes that.
Less time on manual data preparation — more time on engineering judgement
More scenarios evaluated and compared in the same project duration
Client-ready outputs explored in an interactive dashboard, not assembled by hand
Models that can be re-run as assumptions change, without rebuilding
Stronger confidence before infrastructure investment decisions
Time savings are directional estimates based on reported project experiences. Actual impact varies by team size, project type, and existing workflow.
A short ramp-up to powerful, flexible energy modelling.
Sympheny gives expert users the flexibility of advanced energy system optimisation without a long implementation burden. For users with prior experience in optimisation or energy-system modelling, the platform can usually be understood in less than a week. Once workflows are established, many studies can be set up in around 30 minutes.
See why most teams recover the license cost after 1-2 projectsTime savings vary by project complexity, input data quality, and team experience. Examples reflect common workflows after the relevant setup is in place.
Results from real projects
Green hydrogen produced on-site at a cost comparable to diesel — life-cycle costs cut 26% versus the fossil baseline.
Read case studyThree city-wide scenarios confirmed a CO₂-free supply is achievable at similar life cycle costs to today.
Read case studyMapped by 2040 across three scenarios for a new eco-quartier and a city-wide decarbonisation roadmap.
Read case studyWe hold our security practices to ISO 27001 standards — not currently certified
Nanoverbund project · IWB, ETH, Empa, HSLU, Sympheny
“Thanks to Sympheny, we can now develop more precise energy concepts for our customers and create added value for them.”
“Sympheny supports our strategic energy planning in an ideal way. The flexibility is extremely convincing and the sensitivity analysis provides security in finding solutions.”
“Digitalization with Sympheny helps us to develop decentralized energy concepts and creates security for investments in new infrastructures.”
See whether Sympheny fits your planning workflow
In 30 minutes, we'll run a scenario based on your project type — live in the tool, no slides.