Services

Electricity generation, engineering and operation of renewable energy plants. The activities set out in the company’s articles are carried out both on our own account and for third parties.

Main activity

Generation and sale of electricity

SOLARMA generates solar electricity through its photovoltaic plant in Peveragno and feeds it into the grid. The activity includes managing the contracts relating to the sale of the energy and the obligations towards the distribution operator and the national energy services agency.

The company’s articles also provide for trading in electricity and heat produced from renewable sources — from company-owned plants, plants under its management or third-party plants — and for dealing in rights, contracts and certificates representing electricity.

  • Generation from a company-owned photovoltaic plant
  • Grid feed-in and sale of the electricity produced
  • Management of obligations towards the grid operator and the energy agency
  • Trading in renewable energy
  • Dealing in instruments and certificates representing electricity
Engineering

Design, works supervision and testing

The company handles architectural design — preliminary, detailed and executive — as well as works supervision and testing, in civil and industrial construction, plant engineering and environmental protection.

Our approach is that of an owner-operator: realistic sizing, attention to operating costs and verification of yield assumptions before they become contractual commitments.

The qualifications sit within the partnership itself: Gianpaolo Macario is an engineer on the register of the Province of Turin, and Michela Abellonio an architect on the register of the Province of Cuneo. The building-services side and the architectural side each have their own qualified professional. Services reserved to registered professionals under Italian law are provided by the partners in their own name, as the articles of association require. Registration details →

  • Feasibility studies and yield analysis
  • Preliminary, detailed and executive design
  • Architectural and building-services design
  • Works supervision and testing
  • Grid connection and permitting procedures
Experience

More than thirty years of embedded systems, from firmware to cloud

Alongside plant design, SOLARMA brings a competence uncommon in a company of this kind: more than thirty years of experience designing and integrating embedded systems for industry and automotive. It is the competence we use to keep our own plant under remote supervision, and it is available to anyone with similar needs.

Remote monitoring and telemetry

Sensors, gateways and field protocols (MQTT) to collect a plant’s data and cut down on site visits. It is the technology we apply to our own plant to keep operating costs down.

Sensor networks and embedded systems

Sensor nodes and firmware on microcontrollers (Arduino, ESP32), BLE and BLE Mesh communication, UART, I²C and SPI, to instrument existing machinery and plant.

Embedded Linux

Building and optimising embedded Linux distributions with Yocto, porting to bespoke hardware, board support packages and system startup.

Data infrastructure and cloud

Collecting, storing and presenting plant data: containerised services (Docker, Kubernetes) on local infrastructure or in the cloud (AWS, Azure).

Software engineering process

Continuous integration and delivery (Jenkins, GitHub Actions), configuration management with Git and issue tracking: introduced and brought into routine use in R&D teams.

Training and mentoring

Courses and consultancy on embedded Linux and IoT technologies for companies operating in non-competing industries.

Compliance and functional safety

Analysis and support in defining the process and the steps required to ensure compliance with the ISO 26262 and IEC 61511 functional safety standards, the EU Cyber Resilience Act and the Radio Equipment Directive, for embedded systems in the automotive and manufacturing sectors.

Sectors in which this experience was gained: automotive and in-vehicle infotainment, industrial machinery, robotics, telecommunications and energy.

Selected work

Some recent projects

Concrete examples of completed work, from the monitoring of our own photovoltaic plant to infrastructure and firmware for embedded systems.

Grafana production dashboard for the plant: per-inverter power and total plant power over two days
Software · Plant monitoring

Plant telemetry across inverters from different makers

A software system that collects production data and system logs from inverters of different makes and stores them in a private cloud, where they are analysed to follow the energy produced and to enable predictive maintenance of the plant.

  • Prometheus
  • Loki
  • Grafana
  • Terraform
  • Ansible
  • Docker
The cluster rack: three Raspberry Pi 5 nodes in individual trays, cabled down to the switch below
Infrastructure · Edge computing

High-availability Kubernetes clusters for edge devices

Automated installation and configuration, described entirely as code, of high-availability Kubernetes clusters on edge devices with Intel and ARM architectures.

  • Proxmox VE
  • Ansible
  • K3s
  • Tailscale Operator
  • Longhorn
  • Traefik
Open WebUI running locally: an open-weight model answering a request about predictive maintenance of photovoltaic panels
Infrastructure · Artificial intelligence

Local AI inference with open-weight models

Setup and maintenance of locally run inference systems and agents built on open-weight large language models, so that the data being processed never leaves the user’s own infrastructure.

  • Ubuntu Server
  • Tailscale
  • Docker Compose
  • Ollama
  • Open WebUI
  • MCP Server
Firmware · Development environments

Containerised development environment for Zephyr

A development container for system builds and application development with Zephyr, targeting Nordic and STM32 platforms: the same environment on the developer’s machine and in the integration pipeline.

  • Zephyr Project
  • Visual Studio Code
  • Docker
  • GitHub Actions
Firmware · Continuous integration

Automated firmware build pipeline

An automated build pipeline for firmware on custom hardware based on Espressif (ESP32) and Nordic (Arduino Nicla Sense ME) SoCs, producing reproducible builds on every change.

  • PlatformIO
  • Visual Studio Code
  • GitHub Actions
Embedded Linux · BSP

Custom board support packages and system images

Board support packages and customised system images for embedded systems, with repeatable and traceable builds.

  • Yocto Project
  • Docker
  • Jenkins
Architecture

Architectural projects

Alongside its work in energy, the company handles architectural projects in civil and industrial construction: new buildings, refurbishment and the renovation of existing ones, from the first design proposal through to supervision of the works on site.

Architectural work is led by Michela Abellonio, an architect on the register of the Province of Cuneo. Registration details →

Having both the architectural and the building-services competence in house changes how a project is approached: panels, storage and plant are not bolted onto a building that has already been drawn, but enter the design while decisions about form and orientation are still open.

  • Preliminary, detailed and executive architectural design
  • Refurbishment and renovation of existing buildings
  • Building permits and dealings with the competent authorities
  • Works supervision and testing
  • Integration of renewable energy systems into the architectural design
  • Energy-efficiency work on the building envelope
Construction

Renewable energy installations

The company builds and installs plants and equipment for the production of energy from renewable sources, using technologies available on the market and in particular photovoltaic systems producing electricity and heat.

This work can be carried out on our own account or for third parties, whether public or private, in Italy and abroad.

  • Photovoltaic plants for electricity generation
  • Solar systems for heat production
  • Installation of plant equipment and components
  • Coordination of contractors on site
  • Functional testing and commissioning
Operation

Running, management and maintenance

Maintenance, operation and management of plants are part of our daily work on our own installation and are offered to third parties as well. A plant that is followed continuously produces more and degrades more slowly than one left to itself.

The service can be structured as a continuing contract or as a one-off inspection, depending on the size of the plant and the owner’s needs.

  • Output monitoring and deviation analysis
  • Planned routine maintenance
  • Fault diagnosis and repair
  • Periodic checks of electrical protection devices
  • Support with obligations towards public bodies

Scope of activity. All the activities listed are carried out within the limits of, and in compliance with, the rules governing them, both on our own account and on behalf of third parties, whether public or private. Activities reserved to regulated professions are expressly excluded from the company’s objects.

Let’s talk

Send us a line about what you have in mind and we’ll come back with a preliminary assessment.