Ripple Energy wind farm?

will-he-payitoff

JKenH said:

Interesting video (albeit slightly negative) on the Ripple solar farm offering from the EV Puzzle, a keen solar and EV advocate.

Watched up to 14 mins, no idea what he is on about with the cost of the installation. For 3500Kwh with ripple the cost is about £3500. To generate that at home and use it you would be looking at something like a 5000Kw system with home battery. Which having a quick google search comes in at £125000     

He has also made no mention of what happens if his inverter or battery fails after 10 years or if he moves house or dies.

Exiled_Tyke

will-he-payitoff said:

JKenH said:

Interesting video (albeit slightly negative) on the Ripple solar farm offering from the EV Puzzle, a keen solar and EV advocate.

Watched up to 14 mins, no idea what he is on about with the cost of the installation. For 3500Kwh with ripple the cost is about £3500. To generate that at home and use it you would be looking at something like a 5000Kw system with home battery. Which having a quick google search comes in at £125000     

He has also made no mention of what happens if his inverter or battery fails after 10 years or if he moves house or dies.

I'm afraid I haven't got the energy to work through all this but, in short, any comparison with domestic solar isn't straightforward.  Ripple only offers savings at the wholesale price of electricity (esimated to be around 6p per kWh for Derril Water) whereas a home sysem provides savings at the retail price (33p ish currently).  I've always disliked the fact that Ripple make such a comparison. 

But I fundamentally disgree with the views of the video.  He is over complicating the issue whilst adding in his own assumptions. .(A quick Google search revealed that currently commercial PV panels can be rated as high as 700w)  This scheme is simple, you pay your money you get a return. I think all those of us who've read the prospectus with care accept the fact that it's not a great return but still there is a return. Add to that the hedge against volatile energy prices and knowing that we need to support the development of more RE generation then that is your business case.  Take it or leave it.  I chose a small investment as the numbers aren't great in the hope that enough other people would do the same for the right reasons.

70sbudgie

Exiled_Tyke said:

...I chose a small investment as the numbers aren't great in the hope that enough other people would do the same for the right reasons.

Me too. Which is why I am particularly interested in the uptake.

JKenH

will-he-payitoff said:

JKenH said:

Interesting video (albeit slightly negative) on the Ripple solar farm offering from the EV Puzzle, a keen solar and EV advocate.

Watched up to 14 mins, no idea what he is on about with the cost of the installation. For 3500Kwh with ripple the cost is about £3500. To generate that at home and use it you would be looking at something like a 5000Kw system with home battery. Which having a quick google search comes in at £125000     

He has also made no mention of what happens if his inverter or battery fails after 10 years or if he moves house or dies.

Not sure where your figure of £125,000 comes from for a similar home system or why you have included batteries in the cost. A 3500w solar PV system installed on your roof might cost around £5,000 and generate around 3500kWh. If you are on a standard tariff paying around 32p/kWh, to buy 3500kWh from your electricity supplier costs you around £1120p.a. 

If you have home solar and generate 3500kWh per year you will probably self consume between 30 and 70% of that depending on you circumstances saving you between £336 and £784 p.a. You would then export the balance and receive payment for that at say 5p/kWh - between £122.50 and £52.50. Total benefit from home solar is therefore between £358.50 and £836.50. Your earnings per annum are between 7.17% and 16.73%.

To buy 3500kWh from Ripple costs £3360 and will earn you an estimated 6.1p/kWh or 6.35%.

NedS

JKenH said:

will-he-payitoff said:

JKenH said:

Interesting video (albeit slightly negative) on the Ripple solar farm offering from the EV Puzzle, a keen solar and EV advocate.

Watched up to 14 mins, no idea what he is on about with the cost of the installation. For 3500Kwh with ripple the cost is about £3500. To generate that at home and use it you would be looking at something like a 5000Kw system with home battery. Which having a quick google search comes in at £125000     

He has also made no mention of what happens if his inverter or battery fails after 10 years or if he moves house or dies.

Not sure where your figure of £125,000 comes from for a similar home system or why you have included batteries in the cost. A 3500w solar PV system installed on your roof might cost around £5,000 and generate around 3500kWh. If you are on a standard tariff paying around 32p/kWh, to buy 3500kWh from your electricity supplier costs you around £1120p.a. 

If you have home solar and generate 3500kWh per year you will probably self consume between 30 and 70% of that depending on you circumstances saving you between £336 and £784 p.a. You would then export the balance and receive payment for that at say 5p/kWh - between £122.50 and £52.50. Total benefit from home solar is therefore between £358.50 and £836.50. Your earnings per annum are between 7.17% and 16.73%.

To buy 3500kWh from Ripple costs £3360 and will earn you an estimated 6.1p/kWh or 6.35%.

The advantage that Ripple has is that you are directly benefiting from 100% of the production, whereas a home PV solar system is woefully inefficient as in the winter when one uses most electricity the generation is pitiful and in the summer one generates far more than one can use, and ends up selling the surplus back to the grid at a fraction of the cost only to repurchase electricity at full price a few hours later. Of course adding a battery helps increase the efficiency, but also increases capital costs and payback times, not to mention has a relatively short lifespan compared to the panels and will likely need replacing after 10 years at yet further cost.

Investing in one of the solar funds (who are also diversifying into battery storage) listed on the stock market not only gives a ~7% dividend yield, you can currently buy these assets at a discount (most are currently trading on a discount to NAV so are effectively on a '10-15% off' sale), you get your return immediately as these assets are already built and operational, you can invest as much or as little as you want, your capital investment may actually grow rather than depreciate and your investment can be held in a tax free wrapper and can be sold at any time. All of which makes either a PV solar panels/battery installation or Ripple look unattractive to me.

will-he-payitoff

Sorry that should have been £12500, if you watch the latest ripple video the savings shown do not include inflation. As inflation over the last 40 years is above 400% the savings look a lot better. As others have said the main reason I have bought into it is for green reasons.

stone_circle

Write up in today's Guardian piqued my interest. Great idea, but a poor investment. According to Ripple's calculator a 2500kwh/year household should invest £2,625. It says, indicatively, this will give £5,875 savings after 40 years. That's a compound interest rate of only 2.03%.

Can get better returns elsewhere. I know much depends on future electricity pricing, but it's a fair bet that current price is expensive given Ukraine and renewables will become cheaper.

Ripple or a competitor have got to find a way to make schemes like this more generous. Solar farms are being built all around the world. I can't believe they would be for a 2% return. Stinks of Ripple and the energy suppliers they're partnering with skimming off too much for themselves.

Martyn1981

stone_circle said:

Write up in today's Guardian piqued my interest. Great idea, but a poor investment. According to Ripple's calculator a 2500kwh/year household should invest £2,625. It says, indicatively, this will give £5,875 savings after 40 years. That's a compound interest rate of only 2.03%.

Can get better returns elsewhere. I know much depends on future electricity pricing, but it's a fair bet that current price is expensive given Ukraine and renewables will become cheaper.

Ripple or a competitor have got to find a way to make schemes like this more generous. Solar farms are being built all around the world. I can't believe they would be for a 2% return. Stinks of Ripple and the energy suppliers they're partnering with skimming off too much for themselves.

Hi, as discussed previously, those annual returns don't include index linking, so the actual total will be higher. And of course those annual savings could themselves be invested in a savings scheme, applying compound interest.

thevilla

stone_circle said:

Write up in today's Guardian piqued my interest. Great idea, but a poor investment. According to Ripple's calculator a 2500kwh/year household should invest £2,625. It says, indicatively, this will give £5,875 savings after 40 years. That's a compound interest rate of only 2.03%.

Can get better returns elsewhere. I know much depends on future electricity pricing, but it's a fair bet that current price is expensive given Ukraine and renewables will become cheaper.

Ripple or a competitor have got to find a way to make schemes like this more generous. Solar farms are being built all around the world. I can't believe they would be for a 2% return. Stinks of Ripple and the energy suppliers they're partnering with skimming off too much for themselves.

Ripple are up front about their cut of the generated funds if you care to look.  Their guidance on return tends to be highly conservative too and based upon predicted electricity prices which are openly available.  Craig fatha owners are currently enjoying 27p/kwh.  Probably not the greatest investment but how else would anyone contribute to similar projects?  Buying stocks in RE companies doesn't put that money into the projects as far as I understand?  It simply takes profit.

JKenH

The build cost at around £1k/kWp (£1/Wp) doesn’t seem particularly competitive when compared to domestic solar which until recently was available at around this figure. (My installation split over 2 roofs came in at £900/kWp in 2018). Yes there is the grid connection to consider but the economies of scale of an array of this size and ground mounting instead of roof mounting should present considerable savings not apparent in the estimated costs.