Planeto
Planeto is a Swiss browser-based platform for designing district heating and cooling networks. It analyses building demand, routes pipes, sizes geothermal and waste-heat sources, simulates hydraulics and models CAPEX and OPEX across comparable scenarios.
What is Planeto?
Planeto is a Swiss software company in Plan-les-Ouates, near Geneva, and a spin-off of the University of Geneva. Its product, TESSA — Thermal Energy System Simulation Assistant — is a browser-based platform for planning district heating and cooling networks, with a declared focus on fifth-generation, low-temperature systems: loops, meshed topologies, anergy rings and multi-injection layouts. The premise is that an engineer normally strings a project together across several tools, losing the thread between the building survey and the final pipe schedule. TESSA keeps the whole chain in one model. You import geodata onto a map — Excel, GeoJSON, JSON, CSV, gpkg or shp, plus building registries and GIS systems — then analyse the building stock, cluster buildings by CO2 emissions or peak load, and forecast heating and cooling demand, including under future climate scenarios. From there the network layout is drawn automatically from routing data or manually, with areas and buildings excluded at will. Sizing comes next: multiple heat sources, geothermal borehole fields (the geothermal simulation follows the SIA 384/6 2021 standard), heat pumps, industrial waste heat, solar. A detailed hydraulic simulation then computes flows, pressure drops and temperature distribution under operating conditions and drives pipe diameters. The economics stay wired to the live network, so any change to the layout flows through to CAPEX, OPEX, cash-flow projections and the bill of materials. Up to five scenarios can be compared side by side on ROI, cost and emissions, then exported as reports or as an Excel business model. Everything sits on a centralised collaborative platform where scenarios are shared with colleagues and external stakeholders, with folder structures and project states managed across a whole portfolio. Three tiers are offered: Study for one user, Design for two, Engineering with unlimited seats, an API, Claude integration and data integration support. The company publishes Swiss references — Grandvaux, Haute-Sorne, Schaffhausen — and, for firms leaving Comsof Heat or outgrowing nPro, dedicated comparison and migration pages.
What it does
- Analyse a district's building stock and cluster buildings by CO2 emissions or peak load to find where a network is worth building
- Forecast future heating and cooling demand building by building, including under future climate scenarios
- Draw the distribution network automatically from routing data or by hand, excluding chosen areas and buildings
- Size and optimise heat sources: geothermal borehole fields, heat pumps, industrial waste heat, solar and other renewables
- Run a hydraulic simulation of flows, pressure drops and temperature distribution, then size the pipes from its results
- Build the cost model and produce CAPEX, OPEX, cash-flow projections and a bill of materials ready for procurement
- Compare up to five scenarios on ROI, cost and CO2, then report and share them from a single collaborative platform
When to use Planeto / When not to
A quick filter to help you decide if Planeto is the right fit.
When to use Planeto
- Energy engineers designing district heating and cooling networks, fifth-generation low-temperature systems included
- Engineering offices that must size heat sources, geothermal borehole fields and heat pumps with precision
- Utilities and energy service providers simulating building demand before committing to new infrastructure
- Independent energy consultants producing pre-feasibility and feasibility studies under time pressure
- Municipal and public-works teams shaping a decarbonisation strategy for a district or a whole town
When not to use Planeto
- Anyone working outside thermal networks: the tool models heat and cooling, never electricity, gas or water
- Buyers who need a published price, since nothing is quoted online and the contract runs for a year, billed in advance
- Occasional or one-off users: there is no pay-as-you-go option and no monthly commitment
- Small teams wanting to collaborate cheaply, as Study allows one user and Design two, sharing being reserved for Engineering
- Procurement and compliance functions that require a DPA, a subprocessor list or a named hosting country before signing
How to use Planeto
A typical end-to-end flow, from setup to results.
- Start a free trial at tessa.planeto-energy.ch, or request a guided session through the demo form on the Planeto website
- Import the geodata for your perimeter directly onto the map: Excel, GeoJSON, JSON, CSV, gpkg or shp, plus building registries and GIS layers
- Analyse the building stock, compute heating and cooling demand, and cluster buildings by CO2 emissions or peak load
- Draw the distribution network, automatically from routing data or by hand, excluding the areas and buildings you want left out
- Size and optimise the energy sources against the demand profiles: borehole fields, heat pumps, waste heat, solar, peak sources and substations
- Run the hydraulic simulation and let the software size pipe diameters from the resulting flows, pressures and temperatures
- Build the cost model — trench costs, equipment prices — and read off CAPEX, OPEX, cash flow and the bill of materials
- Duplicate the project into variants and compare up to five scenarios on ROI, cost and CO2, testing future climate assumptions
- Share scenarios with colleagues and clients on the platform, then export reports and the Excel business model
- Use the onboarding hours included with your tier — two, four or eight — and the monthly dedicated support to work through your first real project
Pros & Cons
Pros
- One continuous model from pre-feasibility to detailed pipe sizing, instead of stitching several tools together
- Speed is the headline claim: a feasibility study, a scenario comparison and a report in under two hours, with one customer reporting variants computed five times faster
- Fifth-generation networks handled natively — loops, meshes, anergy rings, multi-injection — which the vendor presents as beyond what Comsof Heat could do
- Geothermal and cooling are first-class parts of the model, with the geothermal simulation aligned on the SIA 384/6 2021 standard
- The cost model stays wired to the live network, so every change to the layout updates CAPEX and OPEX automatically
- Browser-based with no installation, no version management and cloud computation, so large projects do not choke a local machine
- Onboarding and support hours are quantified per tier, and Planeto's own energy engineers can take on the design work
Cons
- No price is published anywhere: three tiers are described without a single figure and the top tier is quoted on request
- Annual commitment, invoiced a year in advance, renewed automatically, with no refund for unused months, unused years or downgrades
- Collaboration is gated: one user on Study, two on Design, real sharing only from Engineering upward
- The API is restricted to the Engineering tier and no API documentation is published on the site
- The liability clauses are exceptionally broad — software supplied as is, no warranties, no liability even for data loss, software errors or a hacker attack, and no guaranteed availability
- Nothing is disclosed about data hosting: no country, no region, no provider, no DPA, no subprocessor list, and no position on whether customer data trains models
- Customer data is deleted in full sixty days after the contract ends, which is a short window to retrieve a project history
Pricing & Plans
Planeto does not publish any price. The pricing page presents three tiers — Study, Design and Engineering — without a single amount, and the highest tier is quoted individually on request. Access begins with a free trial rather than a permanent free plan: the general terms specify that upgrading from a free plan to a paying one ends the free trial. Paid use is contractual and annual. The initial one-year term is invoiced in advance, the first year is billed immediately on upgrade, invoices fall due within thirty days, renewal is automatic and non-refundable, and all prices are quoted exclusive of Swiss value added tax. A budget therefore cannot be established from the website alone; a quote must be requested.
- Study — for fast pre-feasibility studies
- early stakeholder alignment and shortlisting options. One user. Network design
- investment analysis
- advanced reporting
- low-priority support. Two hours of dedicated onboarding
- one hour of dedicated support per month. Entry via a free trial.
- Design — flagged as the most popular tier
- for detailed network design and hydraulic simulation
- investment roadmaps
- phased deployment and robust KPI reporting. Two users. Everything in Study plus advanced design capabilities
- scenario comparisons
- network optimisation
- energy source optimisation and phased deployment analysis. Four hours of dedicated onboarding
- five hours of dedicated support per month.
- Engineering — for large projects with several stakeholders working at once. Unlimited seats. Everything in Design plus API and Claude integration
- data integration support
- dedicated support and customised onboarding. Eight hours of dedicated onboarding
- unlimited dedicated support. Priced on quotation.
- No amount is published for any of the three tiers.
Data, GDPR & hosting
A consolidated view of how Planeto handles your data.
GDPR overview
Implementation is partial and worded with care. The privacy policy of January 2024 states that Planeto, as a Swiss private-law entity, is subject to the Federal Act on Data Protection (FADP 235.1) and, where applicable, to Regulation (EU) 2016/679; the general terms claim full compliance with the Swiss law only, never with the GDPR itself. Six processing principles and a list of data-subject rights are published — access, copy, rectification, erasure within legal limits, objection and marketing opt-out — all exercised at info@planeto-energy.ch. A separate EU cookie policy names three cookie categories and rules out advertising profiles. What is missing is just as explicit: no data protection officer, no Article 27 representative although the company sits outside the EU, no data processing agreement, no subprocessor list, no hosting country.
Who owns the data?
Section 5.1 of the general terms is unusually clear. The customer is exclusively entitled to the data it enters into TESSA, to the data the software generates from it, and to anything derived from that data and handed back as part of the service. Planeto retains every right in the software itself, in any technology built during implementation or support, and in the related intellectual property; that division survives termination. Where Planeto acts as a processor, it handles customer data only on the customer's instructions, and third parties may be involved, hosting providers in particular. Naming a customer or publishing its projects as a commercial reference requires that customer's consent.
Reuse rights
Customers may reuse what they produce without asking anyone. Reports, pipe sizings, cost models and the Excel export of the business model all fall under customer data, which section 5.1 assigns to them outright together with anything derived from it. The right granted over the software itself is much narrower: non-exclusive, non-transferable, limited to the number of usage units booked, exercised through a browser only, and restricted to the customer's own commercial or professional activity. Sublicensing is forbidden and no copy of the software may be kept, not even a backup. Section 2.2 rules out reverse engineering, decompilation, translation, derivative works and the removal of proprietary notices. When the contract ends, Planeto supplies a copy of the stored data on written request, in a customary format. Planeto's own reuse of a customer's name, logo or project for marketing is conditional on that customer's consent.
Data retention & training
Hosting summary
Planeto says remarkably little about where data physically sits. Section 2.1 of the general terms states only that the software runs on the computers of a computer centre used by Planeto. Section 3 allows third parties to be involved — hosting services in particular — and disclaims liability for their performance as far as the law permits. The privacy policy adds that any such third parties are based in countries whose legislation guarantees adequate protection, but no country, no region and no provider is named anywhere on the site. There is no trust or security page, and no SOC 2 or ISO 27001 certification is claimed. Jurisdiction is clearer than geography: the contract is governed by Swiss law, the place of performance and the forum are Planeto's registered offices in Plan-les-Ouates, and the company is subject to the Swiss Federal Act on Data Protection and, where applicable, to the GDPR. For the record, the marketing site itself resolves to a Swiss address; that says nothing about where TESSA project data is stored, and Planeto does not say.
Things to keep in mind
Risks and trade-offs to weigh before adopting Planeto.
- Total price opacity means no budget can be built without entering a sales conversation, which hands the vendor the anchoring advantage
- The annual term is billed in advance and renews automatically, with no refund for unused periods or downgrades: an unwatched renewal costs a full year
- Liability is excluded almost across the board — software as is, no warranties, no guaranteed availability, no liability for data loss, software errors or an attack
- Customer data is deleted in full sixty days after termination, and access can be blocked outright while a payment is in default, cutting the customer off from its own project history
- A network sizing or a CAPEX figure produced by the software still commits the engineer who signs it, not the vendor: outputs need to be checked, not copied
- Results are only as good as the geodata fed in — flawed building data produces scenarios that are wrong but look entirely credible
- No hosting country, no DPA, no subprocessor list and no stated position on training models with customer data: material gaps for a regulated or public-sector buyer, and worth resolving in writing before signing
Setup & Integrations
Technical difficulty
Getting in is easy; using it well is not. There is nothing to install: TESSA runs in a browser, updates continuously and computes in the cloud, and a free trial starts without talking to anyone. Every tier includes quantified onboarding — two, four or eight hours — plus one to five hours of dedicated support per month, unlimited on Engineering. The real barrier is professional rather than technical: you need usable geodata (Excel, GeoJSON, CSV, gpkg, shp), building registries or a GIS, and the training to read a hydraulic result and a cost model critically.
Deployment
Integrations
Supported languages
Behind Planeto
Fundraising
Social
Resources
All the official URLs gathered for verification and reference.
Alternatives
Tools that compete with or complement Planeto.
Frequently asked questions
Can I import my existing building data?
Can I compare several network scenarios?
Does it model ground source heat pump systems and geothermal?
Can I extend an existing network rather than start from scratch?
How much does Planeto cost?
Is there a free version?
Which languages does the interface support?
Who owns the data I put into the platform, and how long is it kept?
Is there an API?
Should you pick Planeto?
Planeto is a narrow tool that does its narrow job unusually well. For an engineer who plans district heating and cooling networks, the argument is easy to follow: one model carries a project from the first look at a district through demand forecasting, routing, source sizing, hydraulics and the cost case, instead of the usual relay between spreadsheets, a GIS and a specialist package. Fifth-generation configurations, geothermal borehole fields and cooling are treated as first-class citizens rather than afterthoughts, and the financial model stays attached to the live network, which is precisely where hand-built studies tend to drift. The company behind it is young — incorporated in 2023, a team of seven — but it has named, quantified Swiss references and a solid trail of recognition from the local innovation ecosystem. The AI-based banner across every page is the weakest part of the story: nothing on the site explains what the AI actually does, on what data, with which model. The reservations are commercial and legal rather than technical. No price is published at all, the contract is annual and billed in advance with no refunds, and the liability clauses exclude almost everything, data loss included. Nothing is said about where data is hosted, no DPA or subprocessor list exists, and the documents still carry a January 2024 edition date. Anyone buying should ask for those in writing, along with a clear answer on whether customer data is used to train models. Worth a serious look if district energy is your trade; expect a sales conversation rather than a checkout, and read the general terms before signing.
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