Ferward
Ferward is a geospatial SaaS platform for renewable developers working in Italy: it automates regulatory constraint mapping, machine-learning terrain analysis and grid-connection simulation, then exports pre-feasibility findings as PDF reports and design-ready GeoJSON files.
What is Ferward?
Ferward is an automated territorial analysis platform for the development of ground-mounted photovoltaic plants in Italy, and more broadly for detecting environmental constraints ahead of renewable energy projects (terms art. 3.2). It is published by Energ.ia S.r.l., a Rome-based deep-tech innovative startup whose team of eight includes complex-systems physicists, data scientists, a renewables lawyer and a project manager; Ferward is the company's first product.
The platform rests on three modules: an automated constraint map, an AI analysis and reporting engine, and an electricity grid and connection module. A site is described in one of four ways: typing cadastral references (Comune, Foglio, Particella, Sezione), entering decimal latitude and longitude, importing an Excel file, or drawing a polygon on the map, in which case the cadastral data are extracted automatically. Stated limits are up to 200 parcels per analysis and up to 200 hectares for a polygon selection, with 100 analyses per month or 1,200 per year depending on the profile.
What comes back is a territorial and regulatory pre-feasibility picture: constraints by category, usable surface, morphology, facilitators, any idoneità FER status, electrical connections, energy potential and accessibility. The product teaches a distinction it applies throughout: legal suitability depends on facilitators, while territorial developability is physical, a matter of surface, slope and fragmentation. A plot can be developable without being suitable, and the reverse. On the grid side, transmission and distribution layers are overlaid, connection points identified and the best indicative route analysed within a 15 km straight-line radius (art. 3.2 e). Energy yield is estimated from PVGIS using the SARAH 3 model with a 5% reducing coefficient, taken at the median point of the analysed parcels (art. 6.8).
Outputs are a dashboard, an automated PDF report (zone summary sheet, constraints by category, cartographic plates, connection analysis, territorial and regulatory write-up), GeoJSON downloads and a zip archive of design layers. Access is through a web application with a reserved area behind email and password, responsive for phone and tablet, in Italian and English. Support runs through an in-platform ticketing system answered within 24 to 48 working hours (art. 9). The positioning claim is blunt: from weeks to a few minutes.
What it does
- Map regulatory constraints automatically: SITAP, PAI, urban planning and energy infrastructure, on national and regional layers
- Screen a plot's pre-feasibility in minutes from cadastral references, decimal coordinates, an Excel import or a polygon drawn on the map
- Assess morphology, slope, fragmentation and usable surface with machine learning
- Overlay transmission and distribution networks to find the best grid connection point within a 15 km straight-line radius
- Generate an automated PDF report with zone summary, constraints by category, cartographic plates and connection analysis
- Export design-ready GeoJSON files and a zip archive of every layer useful to design
- Run a portfolio of sites from a collaborative dashboard, with analyses filed by folder and project stage
When to use Ferward / When not to
A quick filter to help you decide if Ferward is the right fit.
When to use Ferward
- Renewable energy developers running a continuous pipeline of land opportunities in Italy, who need to decide in minutes whether a plot is worth pursuing
- Land scouting and origination teams checking SITAP, PAI, urban-planning and energy-infrastructure constraints before committing time to a site
- Grid and electrical engineers hunting for the best connection point within a 15 km straight-line radius, with transmission and distribution layers overlaid
- Technical offices and design teams that need preliminary reports and GeoJSON layers they can take straight into design work
- Large companies, developers and investment funds managing a portfolio of sites, who need multi-account access and custom limits under the Enterprise plan
When not to use Ferward
- Anyone developing outside Italy: the engine is built on the Italian cadastre (Comune, Foglio, Particella, Sezione) and on Italian law such as D.Lgs. 190/2024, DPR 380/2001 and D.Lgs. 152/2006
- Private individuals and consumers: the terms are business-to-business only (art. 2.1) and expressly set aside the Italian Consumer Code
- Teams that need a permit-grade deliverable: art. 6.1 states the Report replaces neither a technical opinion, a sworn report, an expert appraisal, nor a qualified professional's feasibility study
- Investors expecting a document able to carry an irrevocable investment decision on its own, which art. 6.1 d rules out explicitly
- Occasional or budget-constrained users: there is no self-service sign-up and no free tier, with entry at €1,200 + VAT per month after a signed commercial offer and a bank transfer
How to use Ferward
A typical end-to-end flow, from setup to results.
- Contract first: sign the commercial offer, pay by bank transfer, and send the electronic invoicing code or PEC address plus the email address of the user to be enabled (terms art. 2.3)
- Wait for Energ.ia to activate the account and send the credentials, within one working day (art. 2.4)
- Log in to the reserved area with email and password, and accept the legal documents at first access
- Define the site by typing Comune, Foglio and Particella, adding Sezione for the municipalities that use one
- Or enter decimal latitude and longitude, for example 45.4642 and 9.1900, rather than degrees, minutes and seconds
- Or import an Excel file with headers on the first row, using the downloadable template: COMUNE, FOGLIO and PARTICELLA are mandatory, SEZIONE only where relevant
- Or draw a polygon directly on the map, and let the platform extract the cadastral data from it
- Launch the analysis and wait a few minutes while the territorial layers are crossed with the selected parcels
- Read the results in the dashboard: AI summary, interactive constraint map and cartographic plates by category, checking the bell icon at the top right for warnings
- Export the PDF report, the GeoJSON files and the zip archive of layers, and file the analysis in a folder within the site portfolio
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Claimed reduction from several weeks to a few minutes for territorial pre-feasibility
- One unified pipeline: analysis, dashboard and export in a single environment, with no tool switching
- Deliverables that are directly usable, since PDF reports and GeoJSON are included in every plan at no extra cost
- Broad layer coverage: national and regional constraints, urban planning, infrastructure and the electricity grid
- Explicit separation of legal suitability from physical developability, a distinction rarely tooled elsewhere
- Unusual transparency about gaps: the terms name the datasets that may be missing, from non-digitised landscape plans to MV and LV lines, minor watercourses, civic uses, spot archaeological constraints and municipal master plans
- Documented GDPR posture: art. 13 privacy notice, art. 28 processor appointment written into the terms, 48-hour breach notification, and no tracking cookies on the site
Cons
- Geographic scope limited to Italy: the engine relies on the Italian cadastre and on Italian regulations
- No free trial and no free tier, with an entry ticket of €1,200 + VAT per month
- No online sign-up: a commercial offer must be signed and paid before the account is activated
- No API and no technical documentation published
- Hard quotas: 100 analyses per month or 1,200 per year, and 200 parcels or 200 hectares per analysis
- Very thin public surface: no social accounts, no status page, no blog, a pricing grid with no URL of its own since it lives inside a section of the single-page app, and terms and privacy notice available only as Italian-language PDFs
- Contractual asymmetry: liability capped at the monthly subscription amount (art. 6.9), no warranty of completeness or accuracy (arts. 6.6 and 7.2), tacit renewal with cancellation by PEC at least 10 days before the term, no refund even partial on termination (art. 11.6 b), and a full subprocessor list supplied only on request
Pricing & Plans
There is no free plan and no free trial: the three published tiers are all paid. The lowest entry point is the Monthly plan at €1,200 + VAT per month. The Annual plan costs €10,000 + VAT per year instead of €14,400, a 30% discount, while the Enterprise tier is priced on request after contact. All amounts are stated exclusive of VAT (terms art. 5.2). The subscription fee includes remote maintenance and technical assistance (art. 9.1), and prices may be changed with 30 days' notice, which opens a right of withdrawal (art. 5.4). All three plans include full access to the AI calculation engine, to the regulatory and morphological analysis and to grid connection route simulation.
- full access to every feature
- 100 analyses per month
- export of preliminary reports as PDF and GeoJSON
- and monthly renewal cancellable at any time. Presented as the flexibility needed for spot projects or short-term deadlines.
- everything in the Monthly plan
- plus an immediate 30% discount and a guaranteed locked-in fee for maximum saving over the calendar year. Flagged as the Most Popular tier and presented as the strategic choice for professionals and developers managing a continuous pipeline of projects.
- custom reporting and custom monthly limits
- multi-account access for large teams and priority technical support
- with pricing set after contact and planning. Presented as a tailored solution for large companies
- developers and investment funds with structured needs.
Data, GDPR & hosting
A consolidated view of how Ferward handles your data.
GDPR overview
GDPR implementation is documented rather than merely claimed. The privacy notice, published on 22 June 2026 under art. 13 of Regulation (EU) 2016/679, names Energ.ia S.r.l. as controller (Via delle Montagne Rocciose 71, 00144 Rome; tax code and VAT number 18035801002; REA RM-1757308; info@energ-ia.it; PEC energ.ia@pec.it), lists the rights under arts. 15-22 and the right to complain to the Garante. Acceptance is required at first access and at each update, and the accepted version is stored with a timestamp. The terms appoint Energ.ia as external processor under arts. 28-29 (art. 14), with breach notification within 48 hours. Categories of processors are published, cloud and authentication such as Google or Firebase, IT consultants, technical maintenance, but the full list is supplied only on request. Transfers outside the EU require adequacy or standard contractual clauses. No art. 27 representative and no DPO are named, and the site sets no cookies.
Who owns the data?
Under the terms of service, the customer keeps ownership of the data uploaded to Ferward (art. 8.4). Uploading grants Energ.ia S.r.l. a non-exclusive licence, limited to the duration of the contract, to process those data strictly as far as necessary to deliver the services. Everything on the other side of that line stays with the publisher: interfaces, algorithms, analysis and AI models and distinctive signs remain Energ.ia's exclusive property (art. 8.2), and the customer receives only a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable licence to use the reserved area (art. 8.1). For personal data the customer is the controller and Energ.ia is appointed external processor under GDPR arts. 28-29 (art. 14).
Reuse rights
The customer keeps title to what it uploads and receives the outputs to use directly: dashboard, automated PDF report, GeoJSON files and a zip archive of the layers needed for design, with no separate permission to request. Energ.ia's own use is bounded by the documents. Authentication data (email and password handled by Firebase Authentication, plus a unique UID) and the management of profile, roles, permissions and per-user data isolation rest on performance of the contract, GDPR art. 6.1.b. The accepted version of the privacy notice with its server timestamp, and application logs recording a shortened UID, access events and main operations, rest on legitimate interest, art. 6.1.f, for evidencing the art. 13 information duty and for system security. Uploaded cadastral references, coordinates and files serve to produce the analysis and the report. As external processor Energ.ia may collect, record, store, organise, adapt, process, extract, consult, use, communicate, compare, restrict, erase and destroy the data (art. 14.3), and must notify the customer of a data breach within 48 hours (art. 14.7 g). Training AI models on customer data is never mentioned, neither claimed nor excluded. In the other direction, the terms forbid scraping and automated or agentic browsing of the platform (art. 8.3 h).
Data retention & training
Hosting summary
The documents declare no hosting country and no hosting region. The privacy notice (art. 4) states that data may be transferred to other European Union countries, and that where processors or sub-processors, for example cloud infrastructure and authentication providers, operate outside the EU, the transfer takes place only under a Commission adequacy decision or with appropriate safeguards under arts. 44 and following, meaning standard contractual clauses. The cookie policy is more explicit: Firebase Authentication is provided by Google which, like the third parties it involves, could process data in third countries outside the EU and EEA. Read together, that is a transfer framework rather than a guarantee that data stay in Europe. There is no trust or security page and no published list of processors, only categories, with the full list supplied on request. As an outside technical observation rather than a publisher statement, the Ferward application is served by Azure Static Web Apps and the publisher's corporate site by GitHub Pages; neither indicates where customer analyses are actually stored.
Where Ferward works
Country-level availability.
Available in
Things to keep in mind
Risks and trade-offs to weigh before adopting Ferward.
- The report is preliminary decision support, not a regulatory deliverable (art. 6.1); treating a clean screen as a permit is the fastest way to lose money with this tool
- The terms place further checks on the customer (art. 4.1 f): certificate of intended land use under art. 30 DPR 380/2001, consultation of the municipal territorial information system and access to municipal records, site visits, prior consultation of the Soprintendenze, and technical opinions
- The terms name the data that may simply be missing (art. 6.2): non-digitised regional landscape plans, MV and LV lines and their setback strips, minor watercourses and small waterways, civic uses, spot archaeological constraints, variants not yet integrated, municipal master plans. The absence of a constraint on the map is not proof that it does not exist
- Suitable-area and facilitator classifications are statistical elaborations based on distance buffers, with no legal certifying value (art. 6.4); the industrial-site buffer, 350 m for example, must be confirmed by the customer at its own exclusive risk, the motorway buffer is purely geometric (60 m of non-buildable strip, extended linearly up to 300 m), and degraded areas, remediation sites and disused quarries may not surface at all
- Aerial and satellite imagery can be out of date, wrongly classified by automated processing, insufficiently resolved or misread chromatically (art. 6.3), and the PVGIS SARAH 3 yield, already cut by 5%, ignores exogenous variables and micro-shading and does not guarantee bankability (art. 6.8)
- The service is supplied as it is, with no warranty of operation and an acknowledged possibility of errors (art. 7.1), and total liability is capped at the monthly subscription amount (art. 6.9). Speed is seductive: a few minutes of automated screening can quietly displace judgement that used to take weeks, so treat the output as a filter, never as a verdict
- Commercial and data-lifecycle traps: tacit renewal with cancellation by PEC to energ.ia@pec.it at least 10 days before the term, immediate suspension without notice for non-payment (art. 10.1 d), account deactivation and erasure of data within 30 days of termination with no refund (art. 11.6), and a full subprocessor list supplied only on request, never published
Setup & Integrations
Technical difficulty
Technically trivial, administratively slow. There is nothing to install: Ferward is a web application, responsive on phone and tablet, with no API or integration to configure. The friction is contractual, a signed commercial offer, a bank transfer, an electronic invoicing code or PEC address and the named user's email, after which credentials arrive within one working day. Daily use needs no GIS skill: typing Comune, Foglio and Particella, or drawing a polygon, is enough. Excel imports require a precise header format, and a template is provided. Reading results correctly is the real learning curve; the terms mention training sessions.
Deployment
Supported languages
Behind Ferward
Resources
All the official URLs gathered for verification and reference.
Frequently asked questions
How do I start the analysis of a plot of land?
What data do I need to provide?
How many plots can I analyse at once, and what are the limits?
How long does an analysis take, and what does it produce?
What format does the report come in?
How should I read the result?
What does the warning bell mean, and why might an analysis not be produced?
Does the report replace a permit or an expert opinion?
Is there a free trial?
Does Ferward work outside Italy?
Should you pick Ferward?
Ferward is a narrow, vertical tool and does not pretend otherwise: territorial pre-feasibility for ground-mounted photovoltaic plants in Italy. Within that perimeter the data depth is real, covering national and regional constraint layers, urban planning, energy infrastructure, transmission and distribution networks and the Italian cadastre, and the outputs are directly usable, since PDF reports, GeoJSON files and a zip archive of design layers are included in every plan at no extra cost. The distinction the product draws between legal idoneità FER and physical developability is a genuinely useful piece of thinking, and rarely tooled.
The legal framing is unusually careful for a company of this size: a dated art. 13 privacy notice, a processor appointment under GDPR arts. 28-29 written straight into the terms, a 48-hour breach notification commitment and no cookies at all on the site. That care cuts both ways, since the same terms cap total liability at one month's subscription, disclaim any warranty of completeness or accuracy, provide for tacit renewal with cancellation by PEC at least ten days before the term, and rule out refunds on termination.
The counterparts are clear. The perimeter is national, so the tool is of no use outside Italy. The entry ticket is €1,200 + VAT per month, with no free trial and no free tier, and there is no self-service: a commercial offer must be signed and paid before an account exists. There is no API and no technical documentation, and the publisher's public surface is thin, with no social accounts, no blog and a pricing grid that has no URL of its own. For an Italian renewable developer with a steady pipeline of land to triage, the arithmetic can add up quickly; for anyone else, it will not.
- Choosing a selection results in a full page refresh.
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