Case Study: Simplifying Asset Management at Edinburgh Solar Coop
Oct 14, 2025
The Challenge: Ensuring complex, distributed assets perform optimally
Edinburgh Solar Coop owns and operates 30 solar panel installations throughout Edinburgh with a total generating capacity of 1.38MW. In 2026, the Coop expects to bring 12 new sites online.
But building a bigger portfolio also means significantly more work for the team. From tracking the performance of dozens of distributed assets to meeting varied reporting obligations and managing maintenance across multiple sites, the operational complexity grows exponentially.
Manual tracking and spreadsheet-based management can only scale so far. And when administrative burden increases, it can come at the cost of what matters most: asset performance and community impact.
The Solution: Alentis Energy simplifying asset and operations management
To ensure their growing portfolio is managed and stewarded as effectively as possible, Edinburgh Solar Coop worked as an early development partner with Alentis Energy (formerly Solar Manager) to build the Alentis Operating System for smaller-scale solar systems.
Alentis acts as the orchestration engine for Edinburgh Solar Coop's asset management operations, providing:
Intelligent performance monitoring – Manage complex generation datasets, identify underperforming assets in real-time, and receive automated alerts when sites deviate from expected output.
Automated reporting – Generate compliance, financial, and stakeholder reports automatically, eliminating hours of manual data compilation.
Maintenance management – Schedule, track, and document maintenance work across all sites from a single platform
Community transparency – Provide real-time visibility on total generation and CO2 savings, strengthening community engagement and demonstrating environmental impact
The Results: A Portfolio ready to scale
With Alentis managing the operational complexity, Edinburgh Solar Coop has transformed its approach to asset management. With Alentis the team saves valuable time monthly on reporting —time that's redirected to solving performance issues and optimising generation.
More importantly, potential issues are identified and addressed before they impact revenue. Automated alerts trigger maintenance workflows, ensuring nothing falls through the cracks as the portfolio expands.
As Edinburgh Solar Coop prepares to grow its capacity in 2026, the team is confident their operations can scale without proportionally increasing headcount or administrative burden.
Richard Witney, Project Manager for Edinburgh Solar Coop: “Alentis’ Solar Manager tool meets all our needs, is easy to update and use, and can be shared with others such as board members and our maintenance contractor. It is proving to be an important management tool for our community solar projects.”
“As the Edinburgh Solar Co-op continues to grow its portfolio of sites across the city, it recognises the value of the partnership with Alentis. As a community business, we need to work efficiently to achieve our outcomes of reducing Edinburgh’s carbon emissions while maximising community benefit”. Jim Lee, Director, Edinburgh Community Solar Co-op.
John-Henry Charles, CEO Alentis: “Solar portfolio growth means exponentially more operational complexity - that's the reality we set out to solve. Building Alentis in partnership with the Edinburgh team, from Tumbles to Waverley Court, showed us exactly what practical energy asset managers and operators need. We're excited to continue supporting them as they scale in the most efficient way possible!”
Edinburgh Solar Coop’s Community Page. See more on: https://report.thesolarmanager.com/community/edinburghcoop