Ripple Energy wind farm?

NedS

70sbudgie said:

To add into the mix, I also had another reason for investing in a Ripple project. It is my personal belief that the we need more renewable generation connected to the grid. The Ripple model appears not to be to create new projects, but to buy and move forward with existing projects. (I'm less sure about this for Graig Fatha, but it certainly appears to be the case for Kirk Hill and I suspect that is what is happening with prohect 3 now, the sale negotiations). So it is a mechanism by which funding is made available to actually get generators online. And because of the mechanism by which the investment is returned, it is open up to the likes of me, who has a very limited pot available for investment.

So I chose my investment value for Kirk Hill so as to enable me to support multiple projects (I settled on 3 as the optimum).

I think the same argument could be made for any of the listed solar or wind funds. They all have investment managers who bid on a pipeline of approved projects and use their raised funds to construct and operate those assets, sell the electricity produced and return profit to share holders by way of a dividend (typically 5-7%). The main difference is diversification - you hold a far smaller share in many assets, rather than a larger share of a single turbine or small group (farm) of turbines (or a field full of solar panels). The concept is the same though, and you can invest £100, or £1000 or £100,000 as you choose. The main difference with investing in a fund as opposed to Ripple, is that you still own shares of current (depreciating) assets in 25 years time rather than an old rusty decommissioned wind turbine. Ripple could choose to operate the same model if they wished (issue new shares to raise more capital to build more projects), but then they'd be the same as all the existing funds, only smaller and far less efficient.

Where the Ripple model has an advantage is that when energy prices are very high (as they current are), Ripple will be exempt from windfall taxes and they can potentially fully benefit from those exceptionally high prices, making it an exceptional hedge as others have mentioned.* The listed funds tend to generate a lot of their income from CfDs, ROCs, and FITs From government, with RPI uprating) or by selling PPAs years in advance giving excellent stability and visibility of cash flow / profits with good protection against inflation, but means they are not able to fully benefit from the current exceptionally high prices therefore providing more of a stable predicable income than a hedge against rising prices.

* There are few good ways to hedge electricity prices. As an oil user (no mains gas here), I can easily hedge oil by buying a Brent Crude ETF when prices are low and selling some to fund the purchase of oil when prices are high (my tank only holds 1000L so I can't buy 10 years of oil when they are giving the stuff away in a crisis). As electricity prices seem linked to natural gas prices presently, maybe there is an ETF that tracks natural gas prices that is well correlated and could be used to hedge electricity prices.

thevilla

NedS said:

Thank you everyone for your comments and for the discussion. I think you've all convinced me - it's not a large investment and we have the cash. At the worst we can view it as prepaying a good chunk of our bill up front for the next 15 years, and if energy prices stay higher for longer, then we are likely to see a decent return on investment, even if higher bills is something we would rather not see (as you say, it's a hedge against higher bills). Being mid-fifties now, it will nicely take us through to 80.

The only thing that concerns me now is the lack of visibility around what the next project may be, but the £25 reservation fee is not too steep to get on board.

There have been a few questions on the Ripple forum about the £25 deposit. Ripple's reply says this is optional and merely buys the chance to buy into a project before "shares" go on general sale.  I don't think either project has been 100% subscribed so the advantage is probably insignificant but then £25 isn't a king's ransom and gives them a signal of demand.

As for project 3, there was a video explaining it is taking time as the dno / grid process to allow connections to supply needs to be taken into account.  There could be a fantastic project ready to roll but if it is 4 years away from connection nobody would be happy and our £25s would sit there for years. Ripple expect to announce by the end of the year so let's give them the space to make it worth it!  It'll likely be 2 years in the build so a few weeks is neither here nor there.  It did occur to me if they go with PV it may actually overtake Kirk Hill.  Pure speculation though.

JKenH

‘I bought a wind turbine – now I pay £1.50 a month for energy’

Article in the Telegraph about Ripple’s Graig Fatha wind farm.

But some have gone even further and invested directly in wind turbines hundreds of miles from where they live in an attempt to drive down their energy bills. For those who bought into a recent trial scheme, the idea has already proven lucrative.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/consumer-affairs/bought-wind-turbine-now-pay-150-month-energy/

Officer_Dibble

Good to see the fake green credentials of wind turbines being questioned in the comments section.

Oscarmax

Bear with me I have a severe brain injury.

We are with Octopus energy, we drive a PHEV, In March 2022 we had a 4.4 kWh solar array fitted and in October a Solax 5.8 battery, our energy has dropped use has dropped from to 3900 kWh quite significantly, financial is does not make any sense to increase my battery bank, however, we are 66 years old Ripple in theory sound like the next step, my brain is really confused.

thevilla

Oscarmax said:

Bear with me I have a severe brain injury.

We are with Octopus energy, we drive a PHEV, In March 2022 we had a 4.4 kWh solar array fitted and in October a Solax 5.8 battery, our energy has dropped use has dropped from to 3900 kWh quite significantly, financial is does not make any sense to increase my battery bank, however, we are 66 years old Ripple in theory sound like the next step, my brain is really confused.

If you have the money why not? I'd like a home battery but the financials don't add up. Ripple seems to me a low risk alternative for hedging high electric prices (which is why we invested).  It's likely any investment won't give a financial return for a couple of years. You'll have the pleasure of knowing you're building green infrastructure in the mean time and you can even buy the T-shirt 🤣

NigeWick

Oscarmax said:

 we are 66 years old Ripple in theory sound like the next step, my brain is really confused.

I was 68 when we signed up to Ripple. I roughly worked out what we would need to add to our solar system to cover us for a year and paid for 3,000 kWh of wind. Bearing in mind you can take your Ripple account with you if you move home. Our piece of the turbine put £29.99 towards our energy bill last month and I expect that sort of level over the winter. Now saving up for a heat pump.

Oscarmax

Oscarmax said:

Bear with me I have a severe brain injury.

We are with Octopus energy, we drive a PHEV, In March 2022 we had a 4.4 kWh solar array fitted and in October a Solax 5.8 battery, our energy has dropped use has dropped from to 3900 kWh quite significantly, financial is does not make any sense to increase my battery bank, however, we are 66 years old Ripple in theory sound like the next step, my brain is really confused.

Ok I have now made a decision and paid my £25.00 deposit, previously my yearly electric energy consumption 3900 kWh, 1300 kWh used to charge up our PHEV off peak, leaving approximately 2600 kWh for our everyday consumption, however in earlier in March this year we had fitted 4.4 kW solar array ( to date we have recorded nearly 4150 kWh) our energy consumption has dropped dramatically, in October this year installed a Solax 5.8 kWh battery again this has had a change on our energy use the majority this time off year now off peak.

So we have no real idea of our estimated year electric energy use?

thevilla

Look.  I didn't tell you this but...

Put a sensible estimate into Ripple. They won't and can't check it. Just make it within the realms of believability. They have no reason to knock it back, this is just an exercise to keep the scheme away from legislation required for "investment".  Then just hope for a return without expecting one. Don't put in what you can't afford.

(My opinion: not advice)

Screwdriva

thevilla said:

Look.  I didn't tell you this but...

Put a sensible estimate into Ripple. They won't and can't check it. Just make it within the realms of believability. They have no reason to knock it back, this is just an exercise to keep the scheme away from legislation required for "investment".  Then just hope for a return without expecting one. Don't put in what you can't afford.

(My opinion: not advice)

Isn't there a ceiling on your return paid back into your utility bill account? For example, if I consume 1500 kWh but "buy" 2500 kWh of ripple, isn't there a limit on the benefit I earn?