0:03
Good morning, everyone, and welcome to today's webinar, which is on rethinking solar from cost centres to strategic advantage, which is brought to you by our PA members at Light Energy.
0:13
First of all, thank you to everyone for coming today.
0:15
We hope that you find the webinar useful.
0:17
It is going to be an interactive session, so we have a few polls throughout for which your contributions will be greatly appreciated, and we'll be doing a Q &A throughout the session and at the end.
0:25
So if you have any questions at all, please do put those into the questions box.
0:29
And following the webinar, we'll be sending you all an article email, which will have a copy of the slides and a copy of the recording, along with the contact details of today's presenters.
0:39
So without any further ado, I'll hand you over to today's presenters, Xander and Pascal.
0:45
Thanks a lot.
0:46
Hi, everyone, and welcome to the webinar.
0:50
So I'm Xander Penney.
0:51
I'm the business development director for Alight in the UK.
0:55
Just a quick background on Alight, we're a solar developer and IPP, specializes in PPAs, particularly behind the meter.
1:07
So for companies such as yourselves, commercial industrial businesses, we specialize in installing, developing, and operating solar assets on rooftops or on ground, onsite, or near sites.
1:19
So we'll be talking a lot about solar in the UK and what that means for you and your business I'll hand over to Pascal for an intro as well.
1:29
Yeah, hi everybody. So my name is Pascal Ollun. I work as a client executive.
1:35
I'm working with Onsite Solar across Europe and in the UK the last five years.
1:41
So supporting and guiding corporates like yourself from sort of the inception to installations.
1:49
So yeah, happy to have this webinar on Onsite and Private Wire.
1:53
and as we said in the beginning you know feel free to ask questions in the chat and we'll try to pick them up as we go along and if there are anything you want us to focus on just let us know and we'll sort of accommodate accordingly I mean we want this to be interesting for you so just let us know so yeah thanks.
2:21
Just to kick off I guess with the bit of context and this will be familiar to many of you on the call.
2:28
Energy is now becoming a very hot topic, even in the boardroom now for food and beverage businesses.
2:36
I mean, over the last two to three years there's been a large surge in UK food prices. I think since 2021 it's been around 25% in the UK.
2:46
And one of the large drivers of that increase has been energy, which has accounted for around third of that increase.
2:54
So some of that can obviously be passed on to consumers, but that's also impacting bottom line for food and bed manufacturers.
3:04
And so we're seeing a lot more interest from management teams and board teams to find ways to reduce that energy bill.
3:15
And onsite solar is one of the key quick fixes or quick wins that management teams can use to reduce energy costs, and we'll come on to that in a bit more detail.
3:27
But it is important to note that it's not just about decreasing costs.
3:33
As you, I'm sure, have experienced, consumers and customers are increasingly asking for the products that they use to be manufactured in a sustainable way, and they to be transparent and visible rather than, for example, buying renewable energy guarantees of origin, which can be seen as perhaps slightly less transparent.
3:59
So there's much more pressure now on businesses to decarbonize in a way that is transparent and visible.
4:08
And then the other point that's obviously key is the increased geopolitical risk, which we're seeing across many parts of the globe, and that's impacting energy markets significantly.
4:23
In spiking gas prices are ultimately passed on to manufacturers in higher electricity costs, and that then is passed on to consumers somewhat, but can impact profitability.
4:36
So there's a need, I think, for businesses to look at not just producing costs, not just being more sustainable but also being more resilient in their energy supply and finding ways to generate through on-site generation and using other technologies such as storage. Pascal, is there anything you wanted to add there?
5:01
No, but we didn't say it in the beginning.
5:04
I think we'll do a second session on storage in particular but it's such a hot topic so we'll sort of scratch the surface a little bit on solar stories today but no.
5:14
I don't know from the participants if you have any if you agree or don't. Again please put it in the chat if you would like to add.
5:29
Next slide.
5:33
So we touched on it briefly in the slide before but the energy market is evolving and there are both positives and negatives to that evolution.
5:43
So the first is we're seeing a lot more volatility.
5:46
I mean before 2021-2022 electricity markets were continuously decreasing and generally pretty steady.
5:58
Since that point, we've had significant spikes that have lasted for extended periods and driven by several factors, but a couple of those are gas prices that have increased with supply shocks due to geopolitical tensions or wars that have occurred, but also seeing intermittent generation coming online, which has pros and cons.
6:24
Renewable generation is low cost, but it is intermittent, and that means that we often are seeing spikes and then drops in energy market pricing.
6:34
And so, there are opportunities there to optimize savings, but if you're not able to access those markets, some consumers and some manufacturers are are being impacted by those significant spikes if they're exposed to that volatility.
6:57
The second which we briefly touched on was the addition of energy storage.
7:01
Again, this is, I think, a very exciting time for battery storage, but it also increases complexity, adding in storage solutions with, whether it's solar or wind or any other generation technologies.
7:14
And so, understanding how that energy storage can be used, the value of that energy, that battery storage can be, and how to work with partners to deliver it is becoming increasingly challenging for manufacturers.
7:33
We're also seeing an increase in government support.
7:36
So, since labels come in, they are pushing very hard for quicker planning timelines and quicker grid connections.
7:43
We've seen the grid connection reforms come through recently, which hopefully will stop to see the benefits of over the next sort of to 12 months.
7:51
That's still in the early phases, but we're hopeful that will enable renewables to be connected more quickly.
7:59
And then the final point is the cost of solar, which has just continued to drop year on year for probably around 10 years or longer now.
8:10
And I think over the last 10 years, I think there's been a roughly a 90% reduction in the cost of panels, and we're still continuing see a reduction in panel price reduction.
8:20
Not at the same rate, but continuing to drop, which ultimately leads to lower electricity costs for those who do install solar.
8:32
Next slide, please.
8:38
Hopefully, the slide before shows that there are opportunities, but there are also complex choices to be had.
8:45
I won't go through each of these in lots of detail, but it hopefully can provide a bit of information around the types of decisions and questions that you'll need to be asking internally.
8:56
So the first is if you're looking at installing solar at your facility should you be looking at just solar alone or does it make sense to add a battery with solar and there are a number of factors that can impact that decision whether it's your load profile, the amount of space you have on site, and how much production you can get out of the solar asset.
9:19
Second is PPA or CAPEX, which Pascal will touch on in a bit more detail in one of the slides shortly, but PPA ultimately does not require any capital investment from you as a business, and a partner will manage that asset for you for 15 to 20 or even 25 years.
9:38
And the alternative is for you as a business to self-invest in the asset and manage that asset through its lifetime.
9:48
Third is an on-site or near-site generation.
9:51
So that, again, depends on do you have roof space available, do you have your own ground or land that's not utilized for any other purposes that you could install solar on, or perhaps your nearby farmland that could be used for solar.
10:07
And so considering on-site or near-site is another sort of trade-off between speed and ease versus scale and size typically.
10:18
And then grid export or export limitation.
10:20
This is getting a bit more technical now, but there are considerations when applying for your solar installation around what the grid will accept.
10:29
And there are cost implications, timing implications on whether you choose to limit the export of the solar system or whether you do request the ability to export power when it's not consumed at site.
10:43
And then permitted development or full planning, again this is just considering in certain situations, so for example rooftops is classed as permitted development, so it's a much quicker planning life, planning cycle, whereas if you're choosing to develop a ground mount system that will require a full planning application and typically takes longer.
11:05
And then one of the other trade-offs that we often see customers talk about is Do you want the lowest PPA price or the highest savings if you're choosing to go with a PPA and can we come on to sort of trade off between those two there?
11:23
And just to add to that, I think what we sometimes, a few of these are like critical tactical questions to answer before you embark on onsite solar and they might actually take a longer time than the implementation of solar itself because building, that's quite quick But there's taking those decisions internally and then there's a few sort of now in the UK it's being reduced.
11:48
But it takes some time to get sort of the grid connection and so on.
11:52
And also on that note if you can and if you have multiple sites then once you make these decisions you can then replicate it across your sites.
12:02
And that's another way and we'll come to the business case because that's always important.
12:06
So the more sites, the more you can just replicate, the better the business case will be.
12:16
Okay, next slide, please.
12:20
Actually, sorry, just before we jump onto this one, we were planning to then run a poll at this stage just to sort of gauge people's experience in solar.
12:32
And so if you wouldn't mind just taking a look at this, this poll and voting, depending on the experience that you have, so ranging from no experience at all, or, you know, have done plenty of on-site or private wire sort of projects previously and everything in between, then we can somewhat tailor the presentation to that experience level.
13:18
Okay, so we've got sort of 50-50, one no experience and then the others more sort of in early stage planning or exploration.
13:28
I think that's helpful to sort of first to gauge how to tailor it, so yeah next slide please.
13:41
Yeah so maybe taking one step back and when you look at sort of your options or renewable options really and in your portfolio you can sort of have these different options and one is then the off or grid connected whether you buy from a solar park or a wind farm and that can obviously cover a lot of your consumption and for the purpose of this session we'll focus on the two inner circles which are private wire and on-site and then within the scope of on-site as Sandra said it can be rooftop it can be a carport it can be land that you have adjacent to your site And private wire and especially in the UK is while you do not own the land, you still enjoy the benefits of on-site solar behind the meter and we'll come back to that later.
14:44
But I think for these two, that's the focus of today and to some extent you are in control of your own sites and you dictate.
14:53
and in terms of speed to market, on-site is typically the quickest provided that you have a site that is suitable for solar. So yeah, next slide please.
15:07
And this is just to echo what Sander said in the beginning, it's true for a lot of different industry verticals but it's definitely true for the food and bev and the sector quite early acknowledged the benefits of on-site solar, not only from a pure business case perspective, but also from the perspective of what customers and consumers are demanding.
15:32
So when we now, there's many different ways you can have green electricity, right?
15:38
And here, GEOs, or as in the UK, they're called the RIGOs.
15:42
You can obviously buy RIGOs to be 100% green, but what is perceived as being you know very sustainable is on-site generation and that is from a communication perspective very strong because you really do what you can with your own site.
16:00
It might not cover all your generation but at least you've done that so that is important.
16:06
We also see that that also motivates internally because people are proud to work at an employer that also take action.
16:16
So yeah just to that that it is important and it sort of builds trust so next slide please and also hand in hand with sustainability is obviously the the financial benefits so what we have to the left is a sort of an all-in cost of electricity I don't know you you have different sort of contracts you're in parts of the UK, so it might differ somewhat.
16:51
But what we do know however is we have an idea of what are the commodity costs and what they will be in the future and what is particular for UK is that you pay a big part of your electricity bill constitutes of non-commodity costs, grid cost taxes etc and yeah they are projected to remain high whether as Sanders said electricity prices are more volatile these are not so volatile so the key here when we now talk about on-site and private wire is the basic fundamentals of the business is that you actually do offset both commodity and non-commodity and and that sort of means that you can enable savings you money.
17:41
Then of course how much you save, what you save depends on a lot of things that we will discuss today but what you can see here is examples that we have and that we're working on and basically what you see here is the bigger the potential for an installation the more savings you can get and that is because of course we have economies of scale to build so the cost is lower and this is particular for the PPA model but you can make significant savings even with just you know using your roof and again like I said in the beginning if you have the possibility to use multiple sites then obviously the savings are multiplied by the sites.
18:27
Rule of thumb with on-site solar has historically depending on what type of activity you have in your site of course but between 5-15 percent you can cover with on-site solar adding storage will obviously increase that part but in no way so far with the technology you can cover the whole site with on-site solar but and if you then go with private wire that's that amount increases even more and Sander will talk about an actual UK case that we're working on but just to say when I work in Europe people are surprised that the business case in the is so good for on-site solar and it has a lot to do with the fact that you pay these high non-commodity costs which you then can save on on-site solar.
19:16
Again if there's any question let us know otherwise I think we can just proceed.
19:25
Yeah so this is something else that then is just to make the distinction between on-site and private wire.
19:33
So when we then in sort of the light definition of onsite is it is within you or sort of you own the roof or the ground or the car part and from a sustainability perspective it's also you make use of existing roof space.
19:52
Typically, Sandra talked about permitted planning etc.
19:54
it goes quite quick to get approval for these type of installations so you control the site you can get savings quite quickly the downside if we now talk with you know compare these two is you you are often limited to the amount of roof that you have so private wire is a good option and that means that because not many corporates own their own land that they don't want to use in the coming years so but what is often the case is that you have a site which is not located in a city and there is adjacent land nearby that is not of high agricultural value.
20:41
Then what you can do is to with a partner or not but you can then use that land to build an on-site solar installation and what you do in private wire is actually you physically connect the solar plant from the plant directly into your That allows you to cover a much larger part of your consumption and then as we saw in the previous slide save more money.
21:08
So these are two very viable options in the UK that works well and again what you can do is partly based on your physical location and your site and your type of activity but maybe also to say you know sometimes you have an old building with the roof that doesn't fit doesn't mean you can't do on-site solar again there's opportunity.
21:31
The other part is another question is you know how far is this land does it have to be is it does it have to be adjacent or can it be one kilometer away or two kilometer away again it has to do with how big the installation is in your consumption because there are losses transmission losses in the cable So it can if you have a bigger installation it can definitely be one to two kilometers away.
21:57
I don't know Sandra how far is the one that we're going to talk about Leather away in terms of distance. That's just under one kilometer. Next slide please.
22:17
So this is there are different options to do on-site solar and we've circled the PPA one and that's because light is as Sander said we're an IPP that provides on-site solar as a service.
22:31
I just want to say that there is no right and wrong here and there are different corporates that choose different models depending on their corporate strategy and I think on the highest level some corporates choose to use their own capex to invest in solar whereas some other companies say that I'm not the solar expert I want my money to be invested in core business and then the solar as a service PPA model is the right one for me. So we see both models both work.
23:08
So what the main differences though for these two is that either you make the investment yourself or a developer does the investment.
23:19
So in the PPA model you actually only pay for the kilowatt hours that are produced whether in the CAPEX one you do the upfront payment and the ONMs.
23:34
In return to not having to do the investment in the PPA model then you enter into a power purchase agreement which is a long-term agreement where you commit to buy the electricity that is generated from that solar assets.
23:50
In the UK it has been I would say standard for rooftops to be 20 years long.
23:58
Now we see shorter ones partly because cost of solar has decreased but also electricity prices has gone up so we tend to move we also see 15 years but this is about the preferences.
24:13
The more important thing is that Today modules have a lifetime of at least 25 years so that's not the bottleneck as such.
24:26
In terms of payback, as a service you obviously start saving money day one.
24:34
Whereas in the CAPEX one you need a number of years to have that payback.
24:42
But I think the last bullet is maybe one of the more important ones is how are you geared up to cater for solar and battery?
24:51
Do you want to build these capabilities in-house or do you want to partner up with a developer that then manages that risk?
25:01
Because from our perspective is if we don't generate output we are not getting paid so our incentives to produce is there.
25:12
So that's a big difference so this is one important one I think to align internally before you do on-site solar at least you need to be aware of these two options that are available because then you need to work with your internal teams to get it through.
25:34
We could probably have an hour on just PPA and CAPEX but on the very high level.
25:41
These are two options and I don't know some of you might also have sites that you do not own yourself.
25:50
It's quite common in the UK again I don't know your exact site but there are plenty of cases in the UK where you can do on-site solar where you have a tenant landlord setup.
26:00
It's just another stakeholder but it has been done and at the end of the day It adds value to the site, to the property, so most of the time people are positive to do these kind of deals and it works under the PPA model as well.
26:29
Yeah I think we can take the next slide.
26:35
Yeah this is a little bit on what is in the PPA price and I will speak on our behalf and I mean when we then provide a price per megawatt hour that is an all-in price so it includes the design, the installation, the permitting, the insurance, the operating, sort of the O &M.
26:58
All of that is included in the PPA and a developer then has its margin in the PPA price.
27:07
But the key for the customer is obviously that it's lower than what you pay from the grid.
27:13
And just in terms of magnitudes, the big costs for a solar installation is actually the installation itself.
27:20
The hardware is becoming smaller and smaller, but it's labor intensive.
27:25
The large part of that is the actual installation itself, a little bit on development and then we have assets management and O &M.
27:40
I don't know if there's any specific questions on PPA as such then otherwise I think we can move on.
27:56
I think we had a second poll just before this one, so we could try that.
28:07
So I guess based on sort of the information that the Pascal has wanted to appreciate, I think in the previous poll it sounds like you're either at an early stage looking at projects or perhaps have no experience at all on it, but So you may find these questions more challenging to answer and that's fine if you want to say not sure yet but basically what business model do you think would be most suitable for your business?
28:35
So investing that capex upfront and then managing the asset for the sort of 20-25 year period yourself or working with a supplier to provide that as a service solution or a power purchase agreement that Pascal was talking about. Interesting.
29:00
Well you're obviously on the right call then. That's what we're here we're specializing in.
29:06
So we'll be spending the next sort of section talking a bit more in detail about what that process would look like.
29:15
I think it's also because what we also tend to see which is again there are different approaches to procurement but sometimes you go out also and you ask for a capex quote and a PPA Which is fine, I understand why you do that. They might just be difficult to compare.
29:36
So of course health and safety being a priority. I think the way you then evaluate is also a little bit different.
29:44
I think when you're looking for a PPA provider you also want to see, of course someone has a low PPA price.
29:51
But you want to see long-term commitment as well.
29:53
So that's the quality aspects is important to understand how a developer works with you and the site to build the installation.
30:03
Okay let's talk about what is a good site and how do you go forward.
30:12
Yeah great and I think Pascal, sorry if we just drop back to the other slide, Pascal and I will sort of run through these together but what we, I guess for you guys looking at sites that you may own or you may be considering solar for, often it's kind of hard to know where to start.
30:32
So this slide is intended just to prompt some of the key questions that you might want to consider or may have even asked yourself, and the first being what is a good site?
30:45
And it's very dependent on several factors, but I think what we've tried to distill down to here is some of the key things to consider.
30:56
So the first is available surface area, which we touched on briefly before, but assuming you have a large roof or perhaps land nearby your site, that's two considerations to be looking at.
31:12
So the first and the easiest, it tends to be rooftop.
31:15
So if you have a roof that wasn't built in the 60s or 70s and has the structural capability to hold solar.
31:25
It's the quickest to install, and it can provide a very significant saving in terms of the cost of the PPA relative to the electricity price, as Pascal mentioned earlier.
31:40
So I think the first consideration is what space do you have on the building?
31:46
The second is who owns the building.
31:48
So are you the owner of a building or are you leasing?
31:52
And we can work in both scenarios and other PPA providers can work in both scenarios where the simplest is if you own the building and then it's a direct contract between you as the landlord and the PPA provider, someone such as a light or another PPA provider.
32:11
If there is another landlord involved and you're the tenant, then there tends to be a sort of tri-party agreement.
32:16
and I mean Pascal I don't know if you want to provide any more on that one I know you've you've worked in a few of those those types of deals.
32:24
Yeah and again it's not rocket science it's just aligning incentives again and most of the time it's easy because the landlord also see a value in adding solar I think it ties into the insurance aspect of it as well you know they obviously are property owners so they might have some special requirements on solar because most of them have done solar before so it's more about aligning with them and their requirements on solar so that once you proceed with something you because we have seen that you've gone very far in having a design and then at the end of the day the risk consultant will say you cannot use this type of hardware and then you need to backtrack the business case might change and so on.
33:14
So it's another stakeholder to involve but it's definitely not a showstopper for sure.
33:23
And yeah maybe just to add on that as well, I mean I don't know your interest or your focus again but just from a pure sort of technical perspective Solar is a very mature business and again of course structural and safety as Henry Ludwig is key you know we you need certain statics to be able to hold solar panels and the mounting but then the most common one used depending of course on on your roof is is you know either you you do a ballasted system or you mount them on your sort of metal roof but most of the time it's we have we at least avoid making any holes in the roof if we don't have to so try to be sort of as because you know you have roof warranties etc so it's a very standardized approach and safe I would say so that's the good thing with roof if that's you know we will once you you do the installation we do the lifting etc but then it's up on the roof and you just enjoy the benefit of it.
34:32
And I probably should have said before we're going into exactly what a good site looks like other consideration is what your consumption is because there's the sort of matching two things one is what your load is at your site and the second is then what you're actually able to build either on site or near your site and so those those two things are really important and the first thing probably is to look at exactly what your load is and then we can look at what the maximum sort of, I guess, theoretical size of an asset would be to optimize the savings.
35:08
And then typically we would look to say, okay, well, do you have the space to build something that big, either on site or near site?
35:18
And often if it's a very large, if the site consumption is very high, then we pretty much use all of the available space.
35:26
Whereas if the consumption perhaps a little bit lower then you may not need to use all of the available space that's on site or near site.
35:35
And just to add to that, that's something typically a developer helps you with.
35:39
So you know we just need your site and half hourly consumption and that modeling is something we do on a daily basis but I think even with an operation that is sort of five times a day and then you drop during weekends you can still have a good business case and the other thing why Sander is also talking about matching the solar and battery with consumption is at least now in the last couple of years you have grid congestion in the UK so getting export meaning that if you produce more than you consume you at least historically could export and get some revenues from it.
36:17
That possibility now is very limited for various reasons.
36:22
So there is an element of you know what is the optimal size which is just important to take into consideration.
36:34
Then the second one I think where there isn't sufficient space on site either on the roof or your own land we would then look at what land is available near your site within that sort of kilometre or two kilometre radius that Pascale mentioned.
36:52
And then the next question after you've identified the land is, well, how do you secure that land lease?
36:58
And there's kind of two approaches.
36:59
One is that you as the business goes out and speaks to the landowner to try and secure a lease on that land or buy the land.
37:09
But what we typically find is that's non-core to most businesses.
37:13
So they'll work with a developer to help them negotiate that lease.
37:18
land and identify the suitable land.
37:22
So that's something that you typically want to do fairly early on in the process because obviously it can take a while to agree terms and you pretty much can't start any of the planning applications until you have confirmed which land you will be using.
37:40
So it's one of the first steps in the process is to consider Are we using our own site or available space on our own site, or do we need to look elsewhere at neighbouring land?
37:56
I think once you have assessed some of these factors, consumption on your site, available space on the manufacturing site as well, and then any neighbouring land, once a kind of or with the help of a partner or developer, one of the biggest and most challenging parts often we find is the stakeholder alignment.
38:24
It's not necessarily rocket science, as Pascal mentioned, but it's knowing who needs to be involved, what they need to be aware of early on in the process. If that is lined up and people are made aware early, it can be smooth.
38:40
But what often happens is people find out late about things within an organization, and then there's misalignment, perhaps with expectations.
38:50
So getting a really clear view internally of who is involved in the process, and that can range from the procurement team, the finance team, the ESG team, legal, building, the building management or facilities management teams.
39:06
So there's a lot of different stakeholders all have very different requirements or perspectives on what they're looking for.
39:15
And so making sure that everyone's clear on the objective and the goal of this installation and everyone feels heard and that their concerns and objectives are considered in the process is a really critical element.
39:35
And then the final point is the risk appetite.
39:39
And this is largely linked to the lease point and the sort of the PPA versus CapEx point really.
39:47
So where do you want the risk to sit, for example?
39:51
So if you invest with CapEx and install the system yourself, ultimately you as the manufacturer or the organization will take on the risk of that asset throughout its life.
40:05
the 25-year period.
40:07
Now, there are obviously warranties that come with the solar system, but it's effectively up to the owner of that asset to manage the operational efficiency and effectiveness.
40:21
Whereas with a PPA, the developer and funder effectively takes that risk mostly off of the manufacturer or the off-taker. So, that's one thing to consider.
40:33
where does the risk sit in terms of the asset maintenance and the asset operation with a PTA versus a capex? Is there anything else you want to add on that one Pascal?
40:47
No, I think you did it well.
40:50
Maybe just to make more examples of the stakeholders, one thing that is slightly uncommon is these long-term contracts because it's not that often you sign a 15-year contract so that's just something sometimes organizations are not used to so there's not a set governance structure to sign that one so yeah just need to tackle it early on to as Sanders said make sure you have the people's interest covered and then it's fine but that's we sometimes it doesn't fall into a typical sort of decision process so just as one example.
41:33
I don't want to leave a bit of time at the end for any Q &A that does come up.
41:40
So maybe we sort of – I think we've touched on some of this, but we'll provide a sort of brief overview of what does it look like end to end.
41:49
One of the first things, obviously, is defining the business case potential, and that is very much considering site load that we discussed earlier and available space and the size of the asset that we can build.
42:00
And then going back to the sort of pricing point that Pascal talked through in terms of the electricity prices that you're currently paying versus what the PPA price would be, we would effectively help model the savings over the term length of the PPA and the asset life.
42:21
And then what we would, if required, the second stage, look at adjacent land.
42:25
So if the decision was to look for a near-site installation rather than to do it on-site, we'd help identify that land and negotiate the land lease with the nearby farmer or neighboring landowner.
42:44
And then once that's secured, we then move into the sort of core phase, which is the development and PPA construction phase.
42:51
So that depending on what asset we're if it's a rooftop asset, the development cycle and phase tends to be a bit shorter, but the two big points that we focus on is planning and the grid connection.
43:02
They're the two significant requirements, effectively, for any installation.
43:09
Obviously, if it's a ground-mounted system, the planning lifecycle is a bit longer, so more work is required for that.
43:16
And in parallel, we'd be negotiating the commercial terms on both the PPA and any land lease agreement if required.
43:25
And then the construction would start once the development and the PPA commercial terms are agreed.
43:33
And that construction time can sort of vary between three to four months for a rooftop up to, say, nine months, perhaps even longer for very large ground mounted systems.
43:44
So, and development cycles can also range from probably three months to well over a year in terms of getting the planning with Connection approved.
43:56
So, in terms of total development and construction time, it can range from around six months up to two years plus, depending on size and complexity of the installation.
44:08
And then obviously, once that's built, then the asset is operational, typically for 25 years warranty period, but it can often be repowered at a later date at the end of that 25-year warranty period.
44:22
So, it's not just necessarily only for that, for 25 years that you'll receive the savings.
44:31
I think we've only got one final slide, and then we'll open it up for any questions.
44:35
But want to finish on a case study here.
44:38
So this is an example of a food and bed manufacturer that we're currently working with for a nine megawatt private wire system.
44:45
I guess just to help visualize what that nine megawatt size looks and feels like, it's around nine hectares.
44:55
So that's, you know, just, I think it's just shy of about 25 acres in terms of the size that you'd be required for that 9 megawatt.
45:09
That is on a nearby land right next to the manufacturing facility within around a kilometer of the site. So this is the Global Chocolate and Coffee Manufacturer.
45:22
So they were looking to reduce their emissions and electricity bills.
45:26
They have very high consumption, so around 72 gigawatt hours per year at this site.
45:32
And they had the potential probably based on that consumption to install a system up to about 14 megawatts.
45:42
We obviously looked at the site, but they didn't have space for that.
45:46
So we discussed with a neighbouring farmer and secured the land lease with them, as well as the planning consents and grid connection for a nine megawatt solar system.
45:58
So that produces around nine gigawatt hours per year.
46:02
So it's from 15% of their consumption, and on that electricity, they will be receiving it at a 50% reduction compared to UK industrial average pricing.
46:15
So, you know, significant savings versus average pricing in the UK.
46:21
And we're now looking at similar installations across other sites, both in the UK and across Europe with them.
46:33
Just to be conscious, obviously, Pascal, I've been talking for 50 minutes at you, so you may have questions that you wanted to bring up.
46:42
So please look at the chat, but perhaps, and this is just, I guess, a brief sort of a view of a light.
46:57
So we touched briefly, so yeah, we work across Europe, we're a solid developer and IPP, work with large brands across several sectors, automotive, food and beverage, retail, and Yeah, I don't think we need to spend too much time talking about a light and what we do, but people might feel valuable.
47:22
So I think here, if there are any questions from attendees, then Ed, if you wanted to pose any other questions back.
48:00
Hi guys, I don't think there's any questions in there at the moment, but we will be sending a follow-up email around after this with the slides and your contact details, so if anyone does have any questions, feel free to give Xander or Pascal an email afterwards.
48:14
But I think we could wrap it up there and if there's anything else from you guys that you'd like Let's go over before we finish up.
48:27
Cool, all right.
48:28
Well, we'll make sure to send you out the email in the next couple of working days.
48:31
After that, I hope that you have a great weekend and we'll see you at another webinar again soon.
48:36
Bye.
48:37
Bye, guys.
48:38
Cheers, bye.
