NOT MANY KNOW THAT
SEPTEMBER 9, 2021
By Paul Homewood
h / t Tomo
There is a company called Next Energy Solar Fund that is looking for your money to invest in solar projects:
https://www.nextenergysolarfund.com/solar-asset-portfolio/
Next Energy does not directly own the solar parks, but is merely the holding company for a number of letterbox companies that own them. This is an advantage for them, because in the event of an imbalance they can simply let any of the letterbox companies go bankrupt without causing any major damage to the holding company.
And because most of the money invested belongs to the fund’s investors, Next Energy has little to lose anyway. Instead, they just cut off the winnings and service fees.
Oddly enough, the above assets seem to exceed the number of solar parks listed on their website as Tomo found out, but there may be a good reason for this.
But a look at their annual accounts makes an interesting read.
The majority of their capacity, 86%, is subsidized through ROCs and FITs (Renewable Obligations and Feed in Tariffs):
The weighting of the ROCs according to this graphic results in an average of 1.4 ROC / MWh. Since ROCs were valued at £ 50.05 last year, this equates to a grant of £ 70.26 / MWh. Adding FITs conservatively valued at £ 50 / MWh, the total subsidy for these facilities last year was around £ 43 million, on top of income from electricity sales.
According to their accounts, the revenue from the solar panels was only £ 38.9 million, meaning they would have made a loss without the subsidy.
They are playing with new investments in “subsidy free” solar power, but the amount is tiny and can still earn subsidies by selling REGOs.
Nationwide solar capacity rose only 1.2% from 13,305 to 13,477 MW in March 2021, suggesting that investor interest is still low.
Like this:
Loading…
Comments are closed.