Beatrice Has Been Paid £614 Million In Subsidies Since 2019
By Paul Homewood
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/
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The Herald article used the Beatrice Wind Farm as an example:
The Chinese government has a key interest in two of Scotland’s offshore wind farms, including the second biggest of Scotland’s fully operational offshore wind farms – the 84-turbine Beatrice wind farm off the Caithness coast which began operations three years ago.
Through its State-Owned Assets Supervision And Administration Commission Of China company it has control of Beatrice Wind Limited (BWL) which holds a 25% stake in the farm which made has made total profits of nearly £200m over the last three years.
BWL received dividends totalling nearly £60m between 2020 and 2022 through its shareholding. A dividend is a payment a company can make to shareholders if it has made a profit.
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Beatrice as a whole, ie not just the Chinese share, made £98 million profit last year, after depreciation and finance charges:
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Since it began operations in 2019, Beatrice has been given CfD subsidies of £614 million. Even in the year ended March 2022, it was still being subsidised, despite high electricity prices:
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https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/SC350248/filing-history
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Currently Beatrice is paid a strike price of £175.47/MWh:
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https://www.lowcarboncontracts.uk/cfd-register/register/INV-BEA-002/
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So far in 2022/23, Beatrice has still been subsidised to the tune of £7 million, despite electricity prices spiking.
So when Scottish politicians complain about wind farm profits, they should be criticising the obscene subsidies paid out in the insane rush for renewable energy, which they were only too happy to accept in the first place!
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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-20140313
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Well that beats oil platform decommissioning costs.
Wish I had proposed this to Eni management as the solution to their Hewitt problem.
Strangely, Beatrice’s Annual Report makes no mention of its annual electricity production that enabled its electricity revenue to quadruple from £87.5m in 2021 to £363m in 2022.
How strange…LOL
It would appear to be 2084 GWh, from their carbon footprint statement in 2022, and 2147 GWh in 2021
The increase in revenue is of course all due to higher prices
Thanks Paul.
So it seems Beatrice underperformed the wind industry last year, because average wind speeds increased in 2022 vs 2021.
According to LCCC data generation for finanacial years ending March 31 in a year was
2019 478,150MWh
2020 2,312,962MWh
2021 2,142,740MWh
2022 1,533,737MWh
Note the big drop for 2022 – mostly reflecting the very poor wind in 2021 over the last 3 quarters. Maybe some added maintenance.
Definitely something strange going on. I can reconcile the CFD receipts as reported in the accounts, more or less, with the LCCC data summed over financial years:
2019 £48,474,083 vs £47.2m
2020 £282,665,682 vs £281.3m
2021 £255,009,643 vs £256.2m
2022 £29,607,591 vs £29.9m
The initial period will have some revenue from generation before commissioning and CFD commencement. The wind farm is divided into 2 CFD units, with the first commencing its CFD on 11 November 2018, and the second on 28 April 2019. Therefore from FY 2019/20 essentially the entire wind farm is under CFD, and all MWh are reportable.
The value of CFD output at strike prices (which should be comparable to the net revenue given the reported PPA structure) was
2019 £74,366,597 vs £88.1m – N.B. start up revenue
2020 £367,136,409 vs £372.5m – ditto
2021 £347,845,331 vs £343.7m
2022 £252,653,089 vs £392.9m
Why the huge discrepancy in FY 2021/22? £140m is a massive bung on top of the normal contract.
The MWh produced noted previously match the report here:
https://www.ref.org.uk/generators/view.php?rid=BEA&tab=sm&returnurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ref.org.uk%2Fgenerators%2Fsearch.php%3FTechGroup%3DWD%26TechCode%3DFW%26start%3D0%26dir%3Ddesc%26order%3D12
I can find nothing in the accounts to explain the discrepancy, especially since it is reported as revenue. The sale of the OFTO is a capital transaction, and gains and losses on interest rate and currency derivatives used to hedge the debt are reported separately.
Conclusion: revenue of £140m on sales of 551GWh (2,084-1,533) (at an average £254/MWh) appears to be outside the CFD regime.
Beatrice got some ‘splaining to do.
Surprised there is not more interest in this. I have been trying to work out how they managed it. I can find no trace of a grid battery having been installed at the landward substation via planning applications. There are future plans for a 300MW/600MWh battery but it is not yet built.
One for Gordon Hughes and Andrew Mountford, I think.
Another clue. The wind farm is split into two CFDs, but also 4 Balancing Mechanism reporting units – BEATO1 to BEATO4, each separately metered. Did they stop reporting one of the meters to LCCC? Why?
More of the puzzle
https://www.netzerowatch.com/how-windfarms-charge-you-twice-for-the-same-electricity/
Can you spell S C A M ?
CfD was a copy from the City, designed to make loadsa money for the wideboys. I believe a Chancellor of the Exchequer was keen on them.
I wonder what happened to him.
JF