Methodology and data quality

Where every figure comes from, how it is derived, and what it does not tell you.

renDAQ is built entirely on data published by the Low Carbon Contracts Company under the Open Government Licence. We do not hold private data and we do not model or forecast. Where a figure is derived rather than published, this page says so and explains how.

Sources

Dataset	What we use it for	Refresh
Auction Outcomes	Project registry, strike prices, capacity, developer, delivery year	Daily
Actual CfD Generation and avoided GHG emissions	Metered output, CfD payments, market reference prices	Daily
CfD Locations by Parliamentary Constituency	Region, constituency, MP, operational start dates	Daily
Administrative Strike Prices	Auction ceilings used in the AR8 discount analysis	Daily
Renewable Energy Planning Database (DESNZ)	Coordinates, planning and construction status, operator, turbine count and height	Quarterly

Data is refreshed every morning. LCCC publishes settlement data with a lag of several weeks, so the most recent month shown will always trail the present.

Derived figures

These are calculated by renDAQ rather than published directly.

Indexed strike price IMRP + (CfD payment ÷ MWh)

Strike prices are published in the price base for their allocation round, 2012 for AR1 to AR7 and 2024 for AR8, but settled at a CPI-adjusted value. We derive the settled figure from the money that actually moved. As a check, this should be constant within a CfD year and step up each April. Our ingest flags any project where it is not.

Net CfD position Sum of all top-ups received, less all amounts paid back

Covers only the settlement periods LCCC has published. It is not a lifetime total for any contract that started before the published record begins.

Market revenue Generation × generation-weighted IMRP, summed

Uses the same reference price that CfD settlement uses, so it reflects what the generator earned on the market against that benchmark rather than actual realised sales.

Load factor Actual MWh ÷ (capacity × hours in period)

Assumes full nameplate capacity from the first month of settlement. It therefore understates performance for any project that was still commissioning, and for any contract covering only part of a larger wind farm. It also reflects curtailment: a project constrained off by the system operator shows a low load factor through no fault of its own.

Developer grouping Special purpose vehicle names mapped to a parent

Each project is usually held by its own company, so we group them by parent developer where the relationship is known. The mapping is maintained by hand and is not exhaustive.

What contract status means

Our status describes the contract, not whether the turbines are turning. A wind farm can be fully built and exporting to the grid while its CfD has not started.

Status	Means	Does not mean
Live	LCCC settlement records exist. The contract is active.	—
Awaiting CfD start	An operational start date is recorded but no settlement has begun.	Not that the project is unbuilt. It may be generating and selling at market prices, having deferred its CfD.
Not yet delivering	No settlement and no operational start date recorded.	Not confirmation that construction has not started.

Deferring a CfD is permitted and has been widely used. Where market prices sit above a project's strike price, starting the contract would mean paying money back, so some generators delay take-up and sell at market rates instead. Seagreen is the best known example. LCCC data alone cannot distinguish a deferred contract from a delayed construction programme, so we cross-reference the DESNZ Renewable Energy Planning Database, which records planning and construction status directly. A project REPD lists as Operational with no CfD settlement is generating but has not started its contract, and is shown as awaiting CfD start. One that REPD lists as Under Construction remains not yet delivering. We do not assert why a contract has not begun, only what the published status says.

Known gaps

Contracts predating the auction rounds, awarded under the FID Enabling for Renewables programme, appear in the settlement data but not in auction outcomes. We show their generation and payments but have no published strike price, capacity or developer for them.
Large wind farms are metered as several CfD units. We roll these up to the parent project by name. If LCCC changes a unit name, a phase could be mis-grouped until our checks catch it.
Curtailment is not visible in LCCC data. A project constrained off by the system operator will show low output with no indication why.
We do not hold turbine models, ownership stakes or financing terms.
Nothing on this site is a forecast. Where we show an indicative range, it is derived from what has happened before and is labelled as such.

Independent validation

The indexed strike price is the figure most of this site depends on, so it has been checked against a source we had no hand in producing. The Power Station Dictionary, an open data project maintained separately, publishes CPI-indexed CfD strike prices by contract and financial year.

Comparing our derived figures against those published values across 36 contracts and 85 contract-years spanning 2016 to 2021, every one agreed to within £1/MWh, and the largest single deviation was £0.04/MWh — rounding in our monthly aggregation. Our derivation works forward from settlement records rather than from any published index, so this is a genuine cross-check rather than a restatement.

A separate figure, Neart na Gaoithe's 2025-26 indexed strike of £162.82/MWh, matches a value published independently by analyst David Turver, again reached by a different route.

Sources: Power Station Dictionary (Ayrton Bourn, open data) and LCCC settlement records.

Automated checks

Every refresh runs a set of consistency checks before the data goes live. They verify that every settlement record maps to a project, that no project appears twice, that the derived indexed strike holds constant within each CfD year, that period formats are well formed, and that no technology label has silently gained a new spelling. Failures are logged and investigated rather than left for a subscriber to find.

If you spot something that looks wrong, tell us at [email protected]. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. renDAQ is not affiliated with the Low Carbon Contracts Company or the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero.