Pre-DD F1–F4 methodology — claim types, confidence and boundaries

Every figure Heliovulcan publishes carries a claim type and a confidence rating. This page defines the F1–F4 screening framework those claims come from, and — more importantly — what each claim type does and does not mean.

The F1–F4 framework

A Pre-DD screen asks four questions, in order, before serious development cost is committed:

  • F1 · Approval delta — what additional approvals would a hybrid-energy addition trigger beyond what the site already holds, and who must answer that?
  • F2 · Site suitability — do publicly visible constraints and opportunities leave credible search areas for PV and BESS/PCS near the load?
  • F3 · Microgrid boundary — where does the SPV's electrical and commercial boundary sit relative to the mine's own assets?
  • F4 · Financeability readiness — can a third-party SPV recover its capital within the available contract life and still leave the owner better off than the diesel baseline?

The output of a screen is a readiness verdict and a next-step data request — not a design, a financing decision or an investment recommendation.

Claim types

Each published claim is typed by where its content comes from:

  • public_source — stated directly in a public document (e.g. a draft EIS); cited with section/page.
  • reported — disclosed publicly by a company or third party; repeated here as reported, not independently verified.
  • derived — obtained from public figures via a documented reconstruction or cross-check (see load reconstruction).
  • calculated — an output of Heliovulcan's screening model under stated assumptions; indicative only.
  • interpreted — an analyst judgement (e.g. which scenario to validate next); reasoned, but a judgement.
  • assumption — an input chosen by the analyst (e.g. solar yield), with its basis noted.
  • owner_confirmation_required — cannot be settled from public information; requires the owner, EPC, lender or a specialist.
  • unresolved — known gap; explicitly left open rather than filled in.

The rule behind the registry: every claim has an ID; every ID has evidence; every evidence has a source; and anything that cannot be verified is marked unresolved rather than silently completed. Sources, dates, page numbers and document content are never invented.

Confidence scale

  • high — stated directly in a quality public source, or a definitional statement about the screen itself;
  • medium — derived, reported or assumed with a reasonable public basis, but with known gaps (e.g. no primary URL captured, or a unit inconsistency in the source);
  • low — screening-model outputs under unverified timing, pricing, financing and contract assumptions. Useful for ranking scenarios, not for pricing transactions.

Confidence describes how well the claim is supported today, not how important it is.

METHOD-LOAD-RECONSTRUCTION-01 · load reconstruction

Annual energy and peak load are reconstructed from public environmental-impact material. In this case: the draft EIS states a proposed diesel power station of three 1.5 MW units (3.9 MW peak) burning ~7,500 kL/yr of diesel, and its energy table reports 107,853 GJ/yr of energy produced — equivalent to ~30 GWh/yr. The EIS text itself says “approximately 30 MWh/yr”, an apparent unit error; the registry records the derived ~30 GWh/yr figure as derived with that inconsistency stated in its limitations, not as a clean public figure.

METHOD-TWO-SCENARIO-FINANCE-01 · scenario financeability screen

Each hybrid configuration is tested for financeability readiness using indicative DSCR, debt-capacity and residual-payment assumptions. Debt is resized in every scenario to a simplified 1.30x minimum-DSCR constraint — which means identical DSCR values across scenarios are a sizing constraint, not lender approval. The discriminating outputs are the residual / buy-out payment and the owner outcome after buy-out, both of which depend on unverified timing, pricing, financing and contract assumptions and are therefore always typed calculated with low confidence.

METHOD-SITING-SCREEN-01 · siting opportunity & constraint screen

Public maps and mine layout are screened in two stages: first the digitised public-source context, then an interpreted opportunity-and-constraint screen. The resulting PV and BESS/PCS areas are preliminary desktop search areas — not equipment footprints, approved buildable land or owner-selected sites — and are always typed owner_confirmation_required.

What this is not

  • not legal, tax, engineering, investment, EPC-design or lender due-diligence advice;
  • not owner-verified: screens are built from public information and are not commissioned by, endorsed by or verified with project owners;
  • not a bankable resource, dispatch or reliability study — 8,760-hour validation is explicitly the next stage, not part of the screen;
  • not a promise of search-engine or AI citation: machine-readable structure makes the work discoverable and checkable, nothing more.

Machine access

Claims typed under this methodology are published at claims.json / evidence.json, described by the OpenAPI specification and documented at /api/.