Bluefield Solar Income Share Discussion Threads

[gateside] 23/9/2022 07:16

Promotion to the FTSE 250

9.91%¹ Annualised Shareholder Returns since July 2013 IPO

Bluefield Solar is pleased to announce that it has been included in the London Stock Exchange's FTSE 250 index following the latest quarterly reshuffle. The promotion to the FTSE 250 came into effect at market close on Friday, 16 September 2022.

Bluefield Solar is a London listed income fund focused on acquiring and managing renewable energy and storage projects in the UK to provide long term, growing dividends for its shareholders, whilst furthering the decarbonisation of the energy system. It owns and operates one of the UK's largest, diversified portfolios of solar and wind assets with a combined installed power capacity in excess of 766 MWp.

[masurenguy] 22/9/2022 07:42

"Solar funds Bluefield Solar Income (LSE: BSIF, all UK), NextEnergy Solar Fund (LSE: NESF, 90% UK) and Foresight Solar Fund (LSE: FSFL, 70% UK) have also done well. Yields in the sector range from 4.5% at UKW to 5.9% at NESF; all should grow at least in line with inflation. For the yield-seeking, risk-averse investor, the sector remains a long-term buy."
Money Week 20 September 2022

[topvest] 18/9/2022 08:28

Looks like excellent news for solar and wind companies if they can agree a good deal with the Government. Lower fixed prices (albeit higher than long run prices), no windfall tax, lower discount rate. Outcome = high valuations. Its a rare win win situation for solar and wind companies and the consumer alike if handled well.

[topvest] 18/9/2022 08:27

Looks like excellent news for solar and wind companies if they can agree a good deal with the Government. Lower fixed prices (albeit higher than long run prices), no windfall tax, lower discount rate. Outcome = high valuations.

[tournesol] 16/9/2022 08:51

No. That is hopefully still many years to come. ?

[panshanger1] 15/9/2022 15:02

147 today All time high

[topvest] 30/8/2022 20:25

Anyway, Bluefield is as good a home for your money as anything else at this point in time.

[topvest] 30/8/2022 20:09

The gas market is illiquid and broken. Today the gas price was down £2 or c30% because Germany had reported that they had almost filled their storage at the weekend. This is ridiculous. Germany have also been causing much of the problem with their "do whatever it takes approach". The oil price or the stock market would not move in such a way on such a news item. I believe that they were considering suspending trading on it last week. The whole market is a nonsense and totally out of control. Electricity prices should not be priced in the way that they are with such a very high linkage to gas, which is a fossil fuel. The CfD reduction in the price cap is about £20 I believe, so the consumer & businesses are paying a heavy burden. Either things change or we will be having a very bad couple of years...politicians need to get a grip on this mess across Europe. Get it wrong and inflation will be over 20% by the start of 2023 which will take years to unwind. It appears to be a replay of the 1970s oil crisis with oil substituted by gas as the problem commodity. In fact, looking at the numbers its worse than the 70s; that was caused by an x8 oil price hike whereas gas prices are up 10-15x depending on what you think the gas price is.

[masurenguy] 30/8/2022 16:29

This is the third time today that you have reposted the same information on this thread. What is the point - either contribute something new or please desist.

[ammons] 30/8/2022 09:33

The treasury was already making plenty of money from the oil and gas industry but it did not stop Sunak from coming back for more. Call Kwarteng an elephant or a fish if you like. When (if) he becomes chancellor it will not stop him from taking a close look at what he thinks are excess profits made by all the energy companies.

[tartshagger] 30/8/2022 08:15

As a long term holder of the income funds BSIF, JLEN, TRIG, UKW and GRID I would like to see the boards of the renewable investment trusts stand up for our industry by increasing their own pro-renewables lobbying and political donations. It should not be left to a shareholder to post on BBs to do so

[18bt] 30/8/2022 08:06

Agreed - the windfall tax is already being paid by consumers - the 5% VAT on the difference. However, there is a case on the unregulated income - but the best solution to that is not to set electricity prices at the highest margin rate - what a bonkers market.

[tartshagger] 30/8/2022 07:54

There is a lot of guff and misinformation being posted here about renewables and the CfD regime, so here are the facts. The CfD regime is based around the "strike price" where a renewable electricity producer wins an auction to build a renewable resource based on a guaranteed price for the electricity produced. If the strike price is below the spot market price for electricity the Treasury tops up the difference - but in return for this "subsidy" if the spot price is above the strike price, the Treasury trousers the difference. For example at the 2019 auction the winning strike price was GBP39.65/MWh. Once the October hike in the energy price cap is factored in, the spot price for electricity will be roughly GBP520/MWh. The treasury is making a of of money out of offshure wind, onshore wind and solar. Kwarteng is being completely disengenous in demanding that the renewable industry's "excess profits" need a windfall profits tax

[topvest] 29/8/2022 12:07

Yes, it could be coming back again. I was 8 at the time, but can't really remember it - must have passed me by...too interested in playing football and cricket!

[tournesol] 29/8/2022 11:18

I'm old enough to remember Ted Heath's 3 day week in 1974 which was a way of implementing fuel rationing. The high rate of inflation that hit us at the same time resulted in high wage rises coupled with a system of supplementary increases linked to inflation - threshold payments. So when inflation rose by X%, wages rose automatically in line.

I was a computer programmer at the time working on the payroll system of a multi-national manufacturing co. I had to write the code to implement the threshold payments - it was a nightmare of complexity but it taught me a lot about my trade.

Not much call for Cobol programmers these days alas. I always thought it was a really elegant, powerful and transparent language. Much better code than the stuff my son knocks out in Python and C++ these days. Not that he would agree.

[topvest] 29/8/2022 10:09

Belgium and Austria seemed to have finally worked out the problem:


There is lots of blaming renewables, but not much talk of the real problem. Gas prices and the reliance on enemy states holding Europe to ransom, as a not unexpected response to sanctions. Emergency crisis talks across Europe need to start now on both price capping, unlinking the artificial link of the electricity price to the gas price and continent wide 'rationing' of power. I think the general public would probably rather have blackouts at certain points in the day than pay £10k each on fuel bills, which is where this is all heading.

[nerja] 28/8/2022 09:06

What is the CfD mechanism?

The CfD is a contract, in private law, between the electricity generator (in this case, a wind farm) and the Low Carbon Contracts Company (LCCC), which is a government-owned company that oversees the administration of the contract. For renewable projects, contracts last for 15 years.

How are CfD contracts awarded?

Developers of clean power projects bid for the CfD contracts in competitive auctions. The Government sets out a pot of money for the auction in advance – this represents the total amount of money available for the auction. For this most recent auction, the budget is £65 million.

When the auction starts, project developers provide two pieces of information: the size of their project, and the strike price for the project - how much they want to be paid per megawatt hour (MWh) of electricity they produce. The Government caps the maximum amount a project can bid for by setting administrative strike prices (ASPs). We’ll come back to these later. Renewable projects bidding into the auction cannot bid over the amount of the ASP. However, project developers can put in a number of different bids based on project size or the price per MWh.

Competition for CfDs is fierce – renewable companies must put in the lowest bid they can to be in with a chance of securing a contract. The auction is administered by National Grid and bids are ranked lowest to highest based on the strike price. The lowest bids are all accepted until the maximum budget has been reached. This year there is also a total capacity cap of 6GW, so a project that wouldn’t breach the budget but would mean the auction delivers over 6GW of capacity would not win a contract.

Projects have to pick a delivery year in which they will start generating power and as this is a “pay as clear” auction, projects delivering in the same year will receive the same strike price – the auction clearing price. The delivery years for this auction are 2023/4 and 2024/5.

Why does the CfD get more renewables built?

The CfD provides investors with certainty over the future of their investments, with a fixed price for each MWh of electricity they generate. Investors face inherent risks in volatile electricity markets. The riskier the project is seen to be, the more it costs overall to secure the financing from banks or investors for the project; the “cost of capital” is higher.

The cost of capital is a defining feature of a renewable project’s costs, and therefore the costs consumers ultimately end up paying. This is because wind is a freely available resource, so when you have built a project there are no fuel costs to keep on paying, just the costs of maintaining your wind farm. However, the biggest proportion of costs that have to be paid by a wind farm are the costs of paying back the money you have borrowed to build it in the first place. Herein lies the beauty of the CfD. The CfD contract “stabilises221; a wind farm’s revenues and gives investors the certainty that their money will be paid back in a predictable way over a certain amount of time. This, therefore, reduces the risk associated with the projects, meaning they can secure a lower cost of capital – making the electricity cheaper for consumers.

How does this actually work?

Ok if you’re really keen to geek out, you’ve come to the right place. But this is the bit where you’ll have to bear with me, as it’s when I usually have to start scribbling down diagrams. The CfD contract “stabilises221; the revenue of the electricity generator through a relationship between the “strike price” of the contract and the “reference price”. The strike price is the actual price that the generator will be paid per MWh of low carbon power. The reference price is an index of the market price and when this is above the strike price, the generator pays back the difference to the LCCC and, therefore, back to consumers; and when the reference price is lower than the strike price, the generator’s revenue gets topped up.

hxxps://www.blog.renewableuk.com/post/cfdexplainer

[ammons] 27/8/2022 11:58

Some element of the recent profits of all the renewables is down to the high energy price windfall and its that bit which will interest Kwarteng, as well as the subsides. Any long term agreement regarding the subsides can be renegotiated. If the renewables play hardball - windfall taxes or the same thing by another name. I cannot see the renewables escaping unscathed.

hxxps://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/08/20/kwasi-kwarteng-rein-green-profits-energy-price-cap-set-soar/

"Business Secretary wants firms to stop selling cheap renewables at high wholesale prices, as inflation squeezes household budgets."

"The Telegraph can reveal Mr Kwarteng, the Business Secretary, is also preparing to intervene in the energy market in an attempt to stabilise the “crazy” profits of renewables firms."

[nerja] 27/8/2022 11:30

Bsif Jan 2020 145p divi 2.05 Jan 2020 , divi now 2.05
Fsfl Jan 2020 127p now 121.6 divi 2020 1.73 now 1.78
Nesf Jan 2020 126p now.120.8 divi 2020 1.7625 now 1.88

All of these are pretty similar give or take some slightly higher price or higher divi but none of them anything to write home about, if they attack these it will be a massive mistake, i for one will not be buying anymore placements if they do it, I suspect many others will take the same action ,which will defeat what the government want achieve in self sufficient in energy and green as well.

[tournesol] 27/8/2022 10:59

BSIF is hardly achieving stratospheric returns is it? Dividend yield = 5.8% and 12 month increase in share price = approx 10%. Hardly grounds for a windfall tax.

[topvest] 27/8/2022 09:34

Less than 2/3rd of the income is from ROCs now as electricity wholesale prices have x10. There may be a CfD process, but the electricity price and cap is pretty much mirroring the gas price. This makes no sense at all as the electricty price should be lagging the gas price more than it is. Solar and wind farms should be doing nicely at the moment, but they are making excess profits. Something has to change, otherwise Europe will go bust.