Ripple Energy is going bust, but the wind farms are still spinning

27 March 2025

• Ripple Energy is in administration, but the windfarm co-ops its platform helped set up are still running.
• How it works: A wind farm co-op owns (or co-owns) a company called a Special Purpose Vehicle, which owns the windfarm, which hires Ripple Energy to provide “day-to-day services to the co-op such as member administration, management of the contractual relationship with the supply partners, operations and maintenance providers, and member communications”.
• Ripple Energy is going out of business, so the co-op will need to hire a new company to provide management services.
• The windfarm will continue to sell electricity to suppliers.
• Members of the co-op will continue to get discounts on their electricity.
• What should investors in Ripple energy the company do? Wait for communication from the administrators or Seedrs/Republic, but expect that your shares are worth nothing.
• What should investors in the windfarm co-ops do? Read the emails that come from the co-ops. There’s an update from the Kirk Hill co-op tonight, 27 March. Consider downloading your documentation from the Ripple site, in case the administrators switch it off? Continue to enjoy discounts on your energy bill for the next 20ish years. I had a discount of nearly 11% on my electricity this month.
• It’s a shame, I met the Ripple people a couple of years ago, they seemed nice and smart, and they did good work to start democratising ownership of energy generation. Perhaps someone ambitious like Octopus or Thrive will step in and buy it out of administration.

Update from Kirk Hill co-op 27 Mar:

• spv owned coop 58%, bruntwood 42%
• income comes to spv bank, not ripple
• ripple mgmt services includes (included) everything
• accts not filed competently
• bruntwood - employed one ripple acct and fin investigator, rganised auditors [and covering costs]
• coop served notice to get spv accts to coho in apr25 deadline
• res https://www.res-group.com/technologies/wind/
• enercon monthly reports
• “they [Ripple] had no decision making rights but they did control the narrative, which”
• spv needs 2 ppl f/t to runs accts!
• is jamie still involved? in conversation 1d/week, but if not passed temp to the fin investigator - update next week
• RES and enercon rels good