- The useful early-stage output is an evidence-based decision: proceed, redesign, reduce scope, pause or stop.
- An industrial solar and battery project carries approval, land, connection, contract and cash flow risk, with an energy model inside it. An attractive modelled IRR is not meaningful if the model ignores land, approvals, connection or contract risk.
- The four screens cover four common reasons a project cannot proceed: approvals, site suitability, the microgrid or connection boundary, and the financing case.
- Inside those sit five working questions: technical fit, customer avoided cost, contract revenue, carbon value and bankability. Problems often arise where technical, commercial and contractual responsibilities meet.
- A good screen does not remove uncertainty. It makes uncertainty visible early enough that the project can still be reshaped cheaply.
An early project discussion may move quickly to equipment size and projected returns. That can be premature if land, approvals, connection and contracts have not been checked. If those issues are found later, the developer may have spent money testing a design that cannot proceed.
A Pre-DD screen is Heliovulcan’s early-stage screen, not an industry-standard term. It is deliberately cheaper and more sceptical, and its job is to find, from public information, the most likely reasons this project could not proceed, and whether they can still be designed around. That is a different instrument for a different moment.
The useful output is a decision
Early-stage data is soft by nature: load is approximate, diesel prices move, EPC costs are indicative, customer credit is unverified, debt terms are unnegotiated. A screen that reports a precise IRR to three decimal places gives false confidence. The appropriate output is a decision the project owner can act on:
Each of those is a good outcome if it is reached early. Stopping after a public-data screen costs a few weeks. Stopping after contractor quotation, legal structuring and investor engagement costs a great deal more.
Four questions come before the energy model
A spreadsheet can make almost any project look attractive if it assumes the hard parts away. Those parts are rarely the energy balance:
- Approval — does the project fit the existing pathway, or trigger new disturbance, licence, water, heritage or closure issues?
- Land and site — is there somewhere the equipment can physically and legally sit?
- Load and connection — what slice of the load can actually be served, and where is the microgrid boundary?
- Contract — can the value be converted into a payment obligation someone is bound to pay?
- Financeability — does the resulting cash flow support debt on terms a lender will accept?
F1–F4: a practical screen
The four screens map onto exactly those break points. They are run together, not in strict sequence — but each asks one clear question.
F1 · Approval Delta
What new approvals, variations or conditions does adding PV+BESS trigger, relative to the site’s existing consents? The delta is what adds time and risk.
F2 · Site Suitability
Where can the array, storage, PCS and interconnection realistically go, given layout, setbacks, watercourses, roads, pipelines and closure areas visible on public maps? “Empty land” on satellite is not the same as usable, consentable land.
F3 · Microgrid / Connection Boundary
What load slice can actually be served, and how do PV, BESS, diesel, PCS, EMS and site loads connect? This sets the boundary the commercial case has to live inside — explored in Weak-grid mines buy reliability as well as energy.
F4 · Financeability Readiness
Which cash flow can be contracted, invoiced and underwritten? This is where customer savings and project revenue get separated — the subject of the first mistake in BTM BESS feasibility.
The five questions inside the screen
Underneath F1–F4 sit five working questions I keep returning to. They interact, and most projects fail at a boundary between two of them:
- Technical fit — is the system sized to the real, predictable load?
- Customer avoided cost — what does the customer genuinely stop paying, against a credible baseline?
- Contract revenue — how much of that avoided cost becomes stable, contracted SPV revenue?
- Carbon value — is it quantified, correctly assigned, and kept out of double-counting?
- Bankability — does the contracted revenue support debt service at a coverage ratio a lender will accept?
Notice that four of the five are commercial and financial, not technical. Whether the battery works is rarely the binding question. Whether the project can be paid for, contracted and financed, and for whom it creates value, determines its viability.
The question a screen answers
An early screen answers one question: on the public evidence, should this project proceed as proposed, be redesigned, be reduced in scope, wait for missing data, or stop? It gives that answer while the cost of changing direction is still small.