The F1–F4 framework
A Pre-DD screen asks four questions, in order, before serious development cost is committed:
- F1 · Additional approvals required — 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 · The financing case — 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 recommendation to proceed, redesign, obtain more information or stop, together with a list of the data to request next — 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 (
public_source) — stated directly in a public document, such as a draft environmental impact statement, cited with section and page. - Reported (
reported) — disclosed publicly by a company or third party; repeated here as reported, not independently verified. - Derived (
derived) — obtained from public figures through a documented reconstruction or cross-check (see load reconstruction). - Calculated (
calculated) — an output of Heliovulcan's screening model under stated assumptions; indicative only. - Interpreted (
interpreted) — an analyst judgement, such as which scenario to validate next. - Assumption (
assumption) — an input chosen by the analyst, such as solar yield, with its basis noted. - Owner confirmation required (
owner_confirmation_required) — cannot be settled from public information; requires the owner, EPC contractor, lender or a specialist. - Unresolved (
unresolved) — a known gap, left open rather than filled in.
Every published claim has an ID and links to supporting evidence, and every piece of evidence names its source. If we cannot verify a claim, we mark it unresolved rather than filling the gap. We do not invent sources, dates, page numbers or document content.
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.
Load reconstruction
Method ID METHOD-LOAD-RECONSTRUCTION-01
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 per year of diesel, and its energy table reports
107,853 GJ per year of energy produced — equivalent to about 30 GWh per year. The EIS text itself
says “approximately 30 MWh per year”, an apparent unit error; the registry records
the derived about 30 GWh per year figure as derived with that inconsistency stated in
its limitations, not as a clean public figure.
Scenario financing screen
Method ID METHOD-TWO-SCENARIO-FINANCE-01
We test each hybrid configuration using indicative debt-service coverage ratio (DSCR), debt-capacity and residual-payment assumptions. Debt is resized in every scenario to a simplified 1.30x minimum DSCR, so identical DSCR values across scenarios are a sizing constraint rather than lender approval. The figures that distinguish the scenarios are the residual or buy-out payment and the owner’s result after buy-out. Both depend on unverified timing, pricing, financing and contract assumptions, so we label them as calculated results with low confidence.
Siting opportunity and constraint screen
Method ID METHOD-SITING-SCREEN-01
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.
Development sequence
The F1–F4 screen sits at the front of a sequence that runs from commercial need and site control through approvals, operating design and financing. The map is used to identify which decision must be closed before the next stage can begin.
The development sequence is iterative, but the dependency is real: a technical design cannot repair missing land rights, and attractive customer savings cannot finance an SPV without a payment contract.
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;
Machine-readable record. Claims typed under this methodology are published at claims.json and evidence.json, described by the OpenAPI specification.