Many people picture a power purchase agreement as a 15-year mega-deal between a tech giant and a solar farm. In reality, 99% of UK PPAs look nothing like that. Power purchase agreements now sit behind a growing chunk of how the UK's electricity supply is sourced, and getting the price wrong could mean getting locked in well above the market rate for years.

Ed sits down with Rob Ogden, Founder and CEO of Renewable Exchange - one of the UK's largest PPA marketplaces - to unpack how PPAs are actually priced, why REGO certificate prices have swung from over £20 to just a few pence, and what happens to Europe's ageing wind fleet as 20-year subsidies run out and thousands of turbines are pushed onto the merchant market.

They cover:

• Why the "blue-chip" corporate PPA is the exception in a UK market dominated by short-term utility contracts, and how subsidy schemes from NFFO to CfD shaped that split.
• How negative and volatile power prices are forcing generators and off-takers to rethink how PPAs are priced and structured.
• The lessons from Covid and the Ukraine energy crisis on why locking into a 15-year PPA carries real pricing risk.
• Why matching thousands of small renewable generators with energy suppliers is such a hard problem to solve, and what it takes to build pricing infrastructure that can handle PPA demand spiking overnight.
• Why REGO prices have swung from over £20 to just a few pence, and the case for moving to 24/7 REGO matching.

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Transcript available here.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction: Is Your "100% Green" Tariff Really Green?

01:15 What People Get Wrong About Power Purchase Agreements

03:45 UK Power Purchase Agreement Market Structure

04:57 UK Renewable Subsidy History: NFFO, RO, FiT and CfD

07:16 PPA Regret: Negative Pricing and Value Erosion

09:49 Long-Term PPA Risk Through Covid and the Ukraine Crisis

14:32 Hybrid PPA and Flexibility Contract Structures

17:46 Renewable Exchange Origin Story: The Aberdeenshire Wind Farmers

19:53 Platform Scaling Pains: Rebuilding Three Times

22:41 Renewable Exchange's Impact on Consumer Energy Costs

24:30 Co-Located Solar and Battery Revenue Streams

26:58 REGO Explained: Renewable Energy Guarantee of Origin

32:16 The Case for 24/7 REGO Matching

36:27 Expanding to Germany: Legacy Wind Assets and Repowering

41:13 Contrarian Take: Ending Renewable Energy Subsidies