A lot has already been said about the CFDs, which mostly boils down to:
Yes, CfD reduces the risk from the project point of view: income is reasonably fixed and predictable. That's obviously appealing for Ripple, particularly with longer-term unpredictability about electricity market changes (eg locational pricing) and wanting to be able to sell future projects on a clear "people are getting X benefit" basis. There may be financing advantages too. Being a shareholder in Ripple helps me see that point of view!
BUT a big reason a lot of us invested in the Kirk Hill / Derril Water projects was to reduce OUR future electricity cost risk, as a spike in prices would be (partially) offset by a spike in our bill savings. CfD kills that, putting all the risk back on us, and in a way turning the whole thing into a sort of really complicated savings account, rather than a sort of investment which may not pay off if electricity prices over the next 20 years are too low. The risk we're taking of losing money overall is basically the insurance premium we're paying against sky high energy prices.
That's a pretty clear choice. But an additional point I've not seen anyone make: I really want Ripple to be looking at the economics of adding LDES (long duration energy storage) to the projects, and selling their energy via a CFD would dramatically reduce the benefits of that. Renewable projects are increasingly moving towards incorporating LDES (so that you can store the energy you're generating when the market price is low, and release when it's high), and the costs of that will decline a lot in the next few years as the market takes off. (That's mostly non-lithium based batteries, but other forms of energy storage too, like pumped hydro.) Tying into a CfD takes away so much flexibility that it probably stops LDES happening.