Decision-making toolkit

Pre-FID financial model

The financial model that reads your cost and yield scenarios directly, so the business case moves when the engineering does.

Overview

What Pre-FID does

Pre-FID is a project finance model for unsanctioned wind farms. Each scenario maps the investment profile, from construction programmes to cash flow, covering planning, CAPEX, OPEX, revenue, and financing.

Unlike static spreadsheets, our model pulls data directly from your CAPEX, OPEX, and AEP scenarios. Updating a foundation type triggers automatic recalculations for capital costs, installation timelines, and revenue profiles, showing the immediate impact on project returns.

Assumptions are managed through version-controlled, named scenarios. You can duplicate and compare sensitivity or financing cases instantly, replacing fragmented, confusing files with a single, auditable record.

Each model stores its own outputs, preventing accidental data overwrites. This allows multiple users to work on Pre-FID and M&A cases for the same asset simultaneously without interference.

Live · Demonstration project

17.7%

Equity IRR, with the debt sculpted to it

56332317135230201512482718131043231511838201286

Yield down the side, capital cost across — twenty-five runs, not one answer

Top features

What you get with Pre-FID

  1. Driven by the engineering scenarios

    CAPEX, OPEX and AEP results flow into the model as the cost and production lines. The business case is a view of the technical case rather than separate documents.

  2. Construction and taking-over programme

    Project timing, turbine taking-over and commissioning profile drive the drawdown, the revenue ramp and the interest during construction period.

  3. Scenario management for assumptions

    The same scenario tooling as the cost models: alter assumptions, duplicate scenarios and compare scenarios with side-by-side results.

  4. Financing and accounting

    Debt sizing, letters of credit, interest, depreciation and the accounting treatment carried through to the statements, to support any queries about the investment case.

  5. Metric-driven decisions

    Levelised cost of energy, net present value, internal rate of return and cover ratios over the project life, each traceable back to the inputs that produced it.

  6. Results that stay honest

    Results are stamped against the inputs that produced them and marked stale when an input changes, so nobody can present a result that no longer matches the base assumptions.

Illustrative examples

Pre-FID in use

Drawn in the product's own interface, and every figure is real: they come from our live Demonstration project — a 288.75 MW floating wind farm in the central North Sea — and its Default Scenario, so anything shown here can be reproduced in front of you. No client or commercial data appears on this page.

Illustrative

Assumptions that know where they came from

The capex chapter. Capital cost, operating cost and energy yield are read from the scenarios modelled next door, not retyped — so a turbine change in CAPEX moves the return here without anyone copying a number.

Project Demonstration project Scenario Default Scenario Project team
Project and planning Planning and project timing WTG taking-over Capex LCs Production and revenues Opex Finance and accounting

Capex

General

Number of WTGs 25

From CAPEX (update)

WTG capacity 11.55 MW

From CAPEX (update)

Total park capacity 288.75 MW

From CAPEX (update)

Total capital cost 1,196.33 £m

From CAPEX (update)

Net energy yield, P50 1,316.62 GWh

From AEP (update)

Total capital cost at COD* 828.82 £m

Drawdown follows the construction programme

Total uses at COD* 923.89 £m

Capex plus fees, IDC and reserves

Term loan facilities* 692.92 £m

Sculpted to the DSCR target

How the capital build-up is grouped

£m · sums to 828.82
Turbine package 448.41
Offshore BoP and export system 414.08
Development and consenting 30.04
Construction management and owner's costs 28.63
Contingency 25.00
Insurance and financing costs 14.89
Grid / onshore connection 3.45

The grey wells are the mirrored ones — the capital cost and the energy yield are read from the scenarios modelled next door, so a turbine change in CAPEX moves the return here without anyone copying a number.

Illustrative

The cash flow the decision is taken on

Cash available for debt service against the debt service it has to cover, with the resulting cover ratio on its own axis. The sculpting solver sets the repayment profile, and the model reports the ratio it actually achieved rather than the one it was aiming at.

Project Demonstration project Scenario Default Scenario Project team
Project and planning Planning and project timing WTG taking-over Capex LCs Production and revenues Opex Finance and accounting
£87.09
LCoE
per MWh, at 6.0% WACC
£228.75m
Project NPV
at 6.0%
9.4%
Project IRR
Unlevered
17.7%
Equity IRR
4.88× money multiple
1.652×
Min DSCR
Average 1.695×

Cash flow and cover, first six years of operation

£m per year
Cash flow after debt service, and the cover ratio 60 40 20 0 201920202021202220232024
Cash after debt service DSCR, full years only (right axis, 0–3×)

The same years as numbers

£m unless stated
Measure 201920202021202220232024
Generation, GWh 4381,1971,1971,1971,1971,197
Revenue 56.93148.16148.17148.18143.90143.91
Operating cost 10.5826.0326.3327.5428.5233.03
CFADS 46.45119.92116.77113.86108.59104.05
Debt service 8.9268.8070.6768.9065.7262.97
Distributions to equity 0.0083.6647.0346.5944.3042.37
Illustrative

The two variables the committee will actually push on

Equity return across energy yield and capital cost together, both moved in the same run. The sequential tint encodes the value — the reserved red, amber and green are never used as decoration, because they mean something specific everywhere else in the product.

Project Demonstration project Scenario Default Scenario Project team
Project and planning Planning and project timing WTG taking-over Capex LCs Production and revenues Opex Finance and accounting

Equity IRR sensitivity

Run base case 17.66% Equity discount rate 11.0%
Energy yield ↓ · Capital cost → CAPEX −20%CAPEX −10%Base caseCAPEX +10%CAPEX +20%
AEP +10% 56.0% 32.9% 22.7% 16.9% 13.2%
AEP +5% 52.1% 29.9% 20.3% 15.0% 11.5%
Base case 48.0% 26.7% 17.8% 12.9% 9.7%
AEP −5% 43.5% 23.3% 15.2% 10.7% 7.8%
AEP −10% 38.4% 19.7% 12.4% 8.4% 5.8%

The centre cell reads 17.8% against the run's own 17.66%. The grid shifts the base cash flow by the capital cost and revenue deltas with the debt schedule held where the base case put it, so it answers "what if this project cost more" rather than "what if we had financed a different project" — and the small gap at the centre is the price of that being an honest approximation rather than a hidden re-solve.

What the LCoE is made of

Present values at 6.0%
PV of capital cost £757.03m
PV of operating cost £384.62m
PV of decommissioning £12.63m
PV of production 13,254 GWh
Levelised cost of energy £87.09 / MWh

What the run told us about itself

3 notes returned
v1 simplified: capex milestones single-point (Phase 2 InputT hydration pending)

v1 simplified: operations use placeholder capacity/FLH (Phase 3 Op-sheet parity pending)

solver converged=True, resculpt DSCR=1.6524

A model that knows which of its own simplifications are still in place is worth more than one that presents every number with the same confidence. These notes come back with the results and travel with the export.

See it on your own project

Book a demo and we will walk through the module with your numbers, not ours.

Book a demo