Some of my questions parallel those raised in the thread below:
1) Like others, I am puzzled by the difference in terminology in the Offer Document, and in fact elsewhere in Ripple's website, between 'supplier partners' (and the statement "you need to be supplied by one of our partner suppliers", which sounds pretty categoric) and "other suppliers" not stated to be partners where, however, "savings are applied to your bill". I'm with Octopus, I'm OK, but why the contorted and perhaps inconsistent text?
2) If I read the calculations correctly, there is an embedded annual load factor (the P50) of around 28%. The government's consultant WSP suggested 34.8% for new onshore wind, and BEIS in its wisdom claims onshore 45%. The latter sounds way too high to me - more like offshore performance - but the 29%, equally, sounds very low. If Whitelaw Brae is a good site, why so low?
3) I don't have good comparative references for this, but the quoted capital cost for WB appears to be £1.61/kW installed. I appreciate that turbine costs etc. have risen recently but other numbers I have seen for recent onshore are lower.
4) A lot of the economics of WB are driven by the price forecasts. The Base and Central Cases in the graph on p13 of the Offer appear to show that the price starts at about £85/MWh; but from the graph only the Low is about £75, despite the fact that this is the stated level in the accompanying text on p13. It is notable that the projections then have the price dipping significantly through to 2031 (I understand this is based on Annex M of the government's energy and emissions projections). Then, the Offer estimates are based on inflating both the revenue price and the Opex by 2% p.a. So, frankly it looks a bit pessimistic at the beginning but rather more optimistic after a while (inflating both revenue and opex means that the positive margin between the two rises inexorably). It might have been better to keep it all in real/constant terms; there's a reason why Annex M reports in that way. If you do use constant terms, the margin - as the text states - is 4.6p/kWh rather than 6.8p/kWh (p14) - that's a big drop. In any event, the net results of the Annex M projections is that the distributable operating margin (the Savings Rate) will be rather low until maybe 2038. The average savings rate across the 30 year life is not very meaningful to mortals when the next 10 years don't look great!
5) TBH, I don't really understand the text around capital return (the 4% p.a.). It will "form part of your savings, they are not additional to the savings". But my reading of the cash flows is that the "Savings Rate" is calculated as wholesale value of electricity minus Opex. These are both real resource costs. The capital reimbursement, being more analagous to depreciation, is a financial transaction - and not a real resource cost. Since capital is retired as a separate exercise, doesn't that element therefore constitute a separate payment? Sorry if I am being dim here.
In sum, high capex and low load factor seem to fate this to be a low-earning project. I do appreciate that this is an investment in Green Energy and Net Zero. But it is also a financial deal, and not very a rich one. Am I missing something(s)? I'm very happy to be told!