V7 · The Deal Room

1. Deal types and topologies

Before the screens, the cast. Every deal on this platform is a promise between two sides about energy (and sometimes about money that follows the energy price). Three kinds of company show up:

A deal is the commercial handshake that becomes a contract once everyone agrees and signs. Until then you are usually looking at a proposal — an offer that can still be accepted, declined, or answered with a different shape.

Every deal also sits in one cell of a small matrix:

1. Who sells to whom — the deal type
2. Physical or virtual — the instrument (which product you are using) (V0 §3.2 · V0 §5)

Knowing your cell up front tells you which wizard steps you’ll meet, which terms exist, and how settlement will treat you.

1.0a Physical vs virtual — in plain words

• Physical means real electrons are allocated from a seller’s meter toward a buyer’s meter across the network (a wheeling path). You care about connection points, losses, and network charges.
• Virtual means you are mostly hedging price, not moving a dedicated parcel of electrons plant→factory. Both sides must be Eskom-connected and ready for the virtual registration path (often called VWA-ready). Think “contract for difference against the Eskom bill,” not “this truck of power went to Midrand.”

Neither word is a quality judgment. They are two different products.

1.0b Topology — the path on the network

Topology is simply where each site plugs into the grid and whether the deal crosses boundaries. It decides losses and network charges (V0 §1, V2 §8.3). On the proposals list you see a seller→buyer chip chain; an “Eskom” hop appears when the deal crosses municipal boundaries. Virtual deals need both parties Eskom-connected.

You do not pick topology as a fashion choice — it falls out of the two sites you are pairing.

1.0c Contract type — the shape of the energy promise

For physical deals, contract type is the answer to: when the wind dies or the sun dips, who promised what?

Think of a day as a timeline of megawatts. Generation (what the plant actually made) is the shaded band. The promise is the bold line — what the contract said the buyer would get, or pay for.

The buyer picks a contract type from the shapes the seller supports (a wind site cannot credibly offer a flat 24-hour block). That choice also prunes the terms: an AS_GENERATED deal has no shortfall terms to argue about; a TOP deal has no spill argument in the same way.

Note. Contract type is about the energy shape promise on physical deals. Price structures (fixed c/kWh, market-linked, and so on) are separate terms — taught later in this volume and in settlement.

Same-instrument disagreement at proposal stage is still a structured decline and a re-propose (V7 §3.5d) — not a price counter-offer loop. When the other instrument suits you better and it is available for the pair, you can answer in that instrument instead of refusing.

1.1 When each instrument is available to you

The search map and proposal detail do not guess which instrument is “better.” They only answer whether each instrument is usable at all for the pair:

Where the platform cannot confirm that an instrument is usable, it will not put a green light on that button. In plain terms: we only switch a Physical or Virtual option on when we have already checked the facts and can stand behind the answer. If we have not finished those checks — or we know we cannot finish them for this kind of pair — the button stays off, and you will see a short “we can’t confirm this” reason.

Two common cases work that way today:

• Any deal that involves a trader on the virtual side. Virtual registration readiness is something we can verify for generators and off-takers that sit on Eskom. Trader books do not give us the same clear “yes, this party is VWA-ready” signal, so we will not pretend the virtual path is confirmed.
• Trader-to-trader on the physical (wheeling) side. A physical deal needs a resolvable network path between two connection points. When both sides are traders, there is no plant-to-factory path for us to resolve in the usual way, so we will not offer Physical as a confirmed option.

Important distinction: “we can’t confirm” is not the same as “this deal is impossible.” It only means this system will not offer an instrument it cannot vouch for. The commercial idea might still exist offline; what you will not get here is a button that claims the path or the registration is ready when we have not proved it.

On an open proposal, a related courtesy can appear when the other instrument is confirmed for the same pair. You might see one plain line — for example that the pair is also VWA-eligible — with a pointer to where you can look next. That line is only a fact about availability. It does not quote Rand, percentages, or a recommendation about which instrument you ought to choose. Price and “which deal is better for you” belong later, on the Instrument step (§3.4c), not here.

One story. Availability is here (§1.1). Side-by-side money and the choice live on compose Instrument (§3.4c). The same comparison line on review Gaps, and the Decide cross-instrument counter, are §3.5b and §3.5e.

Where this is taught. How each contract type and topology cell settles — losses, charges, adjustments per shape — is V8 · Settlement. This volume gets you to a signed contract.

2. Finding a counterparty

Counterparties are not discovered from the IPP Sites or Off-taker Sites directory rows any more. You find them on the Strategy workbenches — after you already know which book you are shopping for (this plant, this factory, or this trader pool).

Sites and pools themselves are still set up under Entities (V2 §3 · V2 §4 · V2 §5). The search for a deal partner happens one level deeper: open that entity → Strategy → the sell or buy workbench that matches your seat.

In every case the pattern is the same: rank candidates by shape fit → simulate terms safely → Build Proposal when the deltas look right. Nothing is sent to the other party until you deliberately promote a draft and later send it (§3).

2.1 Three doors into the market

IPP — Strategy → Sales

Open the generator site → Strategy → Sales. The Sales desk ranks off-taker sites and trader pools under Who could absorb the gap, by shape fit against this plant’s unsold profile — the hours that still earn R 0. You pick a card, check the seeded terms, Simulate Sale, read the seller deltas and the verdict against holding for the market, then Build Proposal when you want a private draft.

Where this is taught. Layout, fit scores, simulate versions, and promote: V4 §6. Dashboard panels that point you here when Unsold is high: V4 §12.

Off-taker — Strategy → Procurement

Open the off-taker site → Strategy → Procurement. The Workbench ranks eligible generators (and traders, where applicable) against the site’s remaining grid band — fit first, bill impact after you Simulate purchase. Build Proposal opens the buyer proposal studio with suggestions filled from that simulation.

Where this is taught. Full buy walk-through: V3 §13.2. How the off-taker Overview feeds the same supply-mix picture: V3 §13.

Trader pool — Strategy → Simulations (Buy / Sell)

Open the trader pool → Strategy → Simulations. This is the portfolio what-if desk for one book:

• Sell tab — “Who can buy my surplus?” Candidates are off-takers and traders, ranked against the book’s spill / unsold lobe.
• Buy tab — “Who can fill my gap?” Candidates are IPP generators and traders, ranked against the shortfall lobe.

Pick a candidate, enter terms (the same commercial forms as Sales / Procurement), Simulate Sale or Simulate Purchase, compare baseline vs variant KPIs, then Build Proposal to promote evidence into a draft (V3 §8.6).

Careful. This Simulations tab is not the org-wide Scenario Lab (V3 §16). Here you only ask: what if this pool signed this one contract?

2.2 Who you can see, and who can deal

Visibility rules are the same whichever door you use:

• Only public, active counterparties appear (and generators must be tradeable — accredited owners). Your own thin, private or inactive entities are equally invisible to others.
• Anyone you already have an open engagement with — a proposal in DRAFT/PENDING/ACCEPTED/DECLINED or an existing contract — is filtered out. One live conversation per pair.
• Which instrument buttons or pools you can use still follows §1.1: Physical needs a resolvable wheeling path; Virtual needs both sides Eskom-connected and VWA-ready. Trader-pool cards also disclose treatments, activities and protections so you know the policy you’d be dealing under.

2.3 From candidate to draft proposal

On Sales, Procurement, and Simulations alike, Build Proposal (after a successful simulation you can stand behind) creates a draft proposal with you as initiator. You land in the matching proposal studio — seller studio from Sales / Sell, buyer studio from Procurement / Buy — with the simulation’s evidence one click from every section (§3.4 · §3.4a).

Nothing has been sent yet. The draft is yours to complete; your counterparty cannot see it until you send.

Follow along (IPP). Seat: IPP 2 (ipp_2@webill.net). Path: IPP Sites → IPP2 Atlantis Wind → Strategy → Sales → Workbench. You should see Who could absorb the gap ranked by shape fit against the unsold profile. Simulate a buyer, then Build Proposal only if the seller deltas tell one story.

Follow along (Off-taker). Seat: Off-taker C. Path: OffTaker Sites → your site → Strategy → Procurement → Workbench. Wait for the spinner; confirm eligible generators on the left; Simulate purchase, then Build Proposal from the version you prefer (V3 §13.2).

Follow along (Trader). Seat: trader_1@webill.net. Path: Trader Pools → T1 Renewables Pool → Strategy → Simulations. Use Sell for surplus buyers or Buy for gap fillers (V3 §8).

Data. full_demo · seed 42 · stage S03/S04 · sealed 2026-07-15.

3. Proposals — the handshake

A proposal is one organization’s offered terms to another: non-binding, expiring, and deliberately asymmetric — each party fills in only its own side of the sheet. Accepting one creates the draft contract.

3.1 The lifecycle

A proposal has exactly seven statuses. They are enum-exact on the record (DRAFT, PENDING, ACCEPTED, DECLINED, EXPIRED, WITHDRAWN, SUPERSEDED) and appear the same way on both parties’ Proposals lists — with two visibility rules called out below.

Happy path

Branches from PENDING

Return paths

What each status means

The distinction readers get wrong. A DRAFT is invisible to the other side. Build Proposal opens a compose studio with suggestions filled in as suggestions, not as a sent offer — off-taker Procurement → buyer studio, IPP Sales → seller studio, or trader-pool Simulations → Buy studio / Sell studio. Nothing reaches the counterparty until you deliberately Send (to seller or to buyer, depending on seat). Until then they cannot see the row, the terms, or your negotiating brief.

Visibility rules

Sending stamps the start of the validity window. That stamp is what lets a later WITHDRAWN stay on the counterparty list — so a pull-back after send reads as withdrawn on their side, not as a silent disappearance.

Action gates — who may change status

Each action is refused unless the proposal is in an allowed status and the acting organisation is on the right seat (initiator vs counterparty). The UI hides or disables the button when the gate fails; the server enforces the same rules.

Not status actions (same record, same status). Editing terms on a DRAFT or PENDING, accepting suggestions in a studio, and staging a private review draft while you are the receiver do not change status — they change terms or private notes only. Switching Physical ↔︎ Virtual on a DRAFT withdraws the old draft and creates a new DRAFT (instrument switch), rather than editing proposal_type in place.

Terminal vs recoverable. ACCEPTED is the commercial hand-off (work continues on the PPA). SUPERSEDED stays as history. DECLINED, EXPIRED, and WITHDRAWN are closed for that row but recoverable via re-propose, renew, or reactivate as gated above.

3.2 How long a proposal stands

The sender chooses how long their offer stands when they send (and again when they renew or reactivate). The dispatch footer shows a resolved summary — “Valid until 12 Aug 2026 — 14 days” — not a bare date picker. The prefilled default is 14 days; the allowed window is 3–90 days. Once expires_at passes, the hourly background trigger (V1 §6) flips overdue PENDING proposals to EXPIRED. The initiator may renew an expired (or still-pending) proposal up to 3 times — the modal shows “Renewals: N of 3 used” — and reactivate a withdrawn one, each time picking a fresh window.

The deadline is promoted into the modal header pill row so the receiver sees how long they have before they dig into the terms. Inside the last 20% of that window you get a near-expiry warning — on a 14-day offer that is roughly the final three days — so you can ask the sender to renew before your working notes are discarded (§3.5a).

Careful. If the other side edits their terms after you have reviewed them, acceptance is blocked until you re-read the updated fields — you can’t be signed up to a price you never saw. The modal names what changed and both values; acknowledge, re-read, then accept.

3.3 The list

Proposals (/org/deals/proposals — the first Deals tab, in lifecycle order) shows every open conversation — accepted proposals move on to Negotiations. There are no stat cards: one line above the table says what the tab is for, and a New proposal button opens the studio for your seat (the Desk for a trader, Procurement for an off-taker, Sales for an IPP). The badge on the tab counts received offers waiting for your decision — a sent offer waits on the counterparty, so it is not on your badge. Columns:

As the initiator you always see your own Drafts and Withdrawns. Your counterparty never sees an unsent Draft, and never sees a Withdrawal of an offer that was never sent — but a sent offer that you withdraw stays on their list as Withdrawn (§3.1 visibility). Declines and expiries show on both sides. The list is live — when the other side accepts, declines, or you withdraw a sent offer, both parties’ lists refresh without a manual reload.

3.4 Compose in the buyer proposal studio

When you Build Proposal from a physical Procurement simulation, you open a full-page proposal studio — not the list modal: a checklist of sections on the left and one section at a time on the right. Evidence swaps the section for the simulation behind the draft, and Explanations opens field notes and suggestions in a drawer. This is the home for physical buyer composition on an off-taker site. A virtual simulation opens the four-stage virtual studio instead (§3.4b).

Buying for a trader pool is the same kind of studio — evidence one click from each section, public asks vs private limits, readiness-gated Send to seller — but the seat, deal type, and a few stages differ. That path is §3.4e · Trader Buy Proposal Studio; do not use this offtaker chapter as the walkthrough when you promoted from Simulations.

Stages (reading order).

Suggestions. Many fields arrive with a suggested value, a one-line rationale, and Accept / Adjust / Why?. Accepting records that you took the suggestion (source: derived); Adjusting records your override while keeping the original suggestion for the audit trail. Either way it is a decision you are recorded as making — not a silent autofill.

Asks vs limits. Stage 6’s public asks become part of what the seller sees. Stage 7’s walk-aways stay on your private brief; stage 8’s What the seller receives lists only public terms — search it for a walk-away and you will not find one.

Where decisions land. Stages 2–5 write into the draft’s physical_terms (autosave on every change). Stage 6 writes requested_joint_terms (public asks). Stage 7 writes only your negotiating brief. Stage 0 sets proposal_type (Physical vs Virtual). Nothing reaches the counterparty until stage 8’s Send to seller.

Quick questions. If the simulation could not decide a site preference or a low-confidence term, a sky panel (A few quick questions) appears above the stages. Those buttons are decisions — e.g. spill treatment is saved on the off-taker site once; shortfall / curtailment answers write into physical_terms (and stamp the brief). They are not decorative.

The rest of this section walks each stage field by field. Term meanings in settlement language stay in §4.7; here the focus is what you set in the studio and what the draft carries.

Stage 0 — Instrument

Job. Choose Physical PPA or Eskom Virtual PPA before you fill shape and price. Deep comparison rules and materiality live in §3.4c.

Example. Both instruments available; physical saves you more Rand/yr on the stated MWh, but virtual is faster to first flow. You stay on Physical because the factory needs wheeled displacement this year — stage 0 records Physical; stages 2–5 then show physical fields only.

If only one instrument is possible for the pair, the stage collapses to one line (same wording as the search modal) and you continue.

Stage 1 — Evidence

Job. Confirm you are pricing the deal you simulated — no editable commercial fields here.

Example. Impact shows +R 1.2m/yr saving and green coverage up 8 pp with little over-contract → you proceed to Shape. If impact looks wrong, go back to Procurement and re-simulate; do not invent terms on a bad sim.

Stage 2 — Shape

Job. Pick the delivery profile. That choice gates which Risk fields appear later.

Visibility. TOU controls appear only for SHAPED. Other types hide them.

How this shows later. Stage 8’s seller-eye preview lists the contract type. On accept, the negotiating PPA inherits the shape; wrong shape vs plant support surfaces as infeasibility when the seller confirms.

Stage 3 — Price protection

Job. Set how high you will pay — public protection on the offer, not your private walk-away (that is stage 7).

Suggestions. Cap often arrives from break-even vs your site’s grid rate less wheeling, with a cushion (V3 §13.2.1). Accept stamps the brief source: derived; Adjust keeps the suggestion for audit and writes your number.

Draft vs brief. The numbers on this stage are asks on the proposal. Your walk-away (e.g. “I leave above 135”) belongs on stage 7. If you set the public cap equal to the walk-away, a disclosure warning fires — you are about to show your floor.

Stage 4 — Risk

Job. Who absorbs curtailment, spill / under-consumption, and delivery shortfall. Embeds prune by contract type:

Buyer-owned controls (sky Buyer chip) are the ones you must decide; joint fields may also be editable in compose. Seller-owned subfields stay visible for context but are not your pencil.

Curtailment (physical_terms.curtailment_terms)

Spill & excess (physical_terms.spill_excess_terms — when visible)

Shortfall & delivery (physical_terms.shortfall_terms — when visible)

Example. You chose CAPPED on stage 2 → shortfall block hidden, spill block shown. You set under-consumption to NO_PENALTY and buyer-caused curtailment to DEEMED. Draft carries those two; firmness warranties stay out of scope for this shape.

Stage 5 — Green

Job. How you account for renewable attributes.

Green coverage on the evidence column is the strategy KPI; this stage is the contractual accounting choice that settlement and reporting will use.

Stage 6 — Public asks

Job. Size and commercial envelope the seller will see. These are joint asks on requested_joint_terms, not private limits.

Example. Ask 5 MW · 10 years · CPI · start 2027-01-01. Stage 8 preview shows capacity and term; the seller responds against those public numbers. Your walk-away capacity (e.g. leave below 3 MW) stays on stage 7.

Stage 7 — Private limits

Job. Record what you will not cross. Never sent. Banner on the stage says so; stage 8’s seller-eye preview omits every row here.

Typical keys: cap_price_ckwh, price_ceiling_ckwh, contracted_capacity_mw. Setting a public stage-3 cap equal to the walk-away triggers the disclosure warning (COUNTER / OFFTAKER §5).

Stage 8 — Review & send

Job. See every term the seller will receive, clear readiness, choose how long the offer stands, then Send to seller.

How the list reads. Only the terms you set appear — the buyer-set and jointly negotiated ones. Terms the seller sets (their availability guarantee, spill disposal, seller-caused curtailment) are theirs to fill when they respond, so they are not listed as yours. A term you have not set reads Not set; a section you left wholly blank, such as untouched termination terms, reads as one Not set line; and an optional device you have not switched on (Upside sharing device, Volume strike device) shows only that it is off.

Example. What the seller receives shows As generated · cap 128 c/kWh · 5 MW · 10 years · CPI. Readiness green → expiry 14 days → Send. Your 135 c/kWh walk-away never appears.

Follow along (fields). Seat: Off-taker C. Path: Procurement → simulate → Build Proposal. Walk stages 2–8: set contract type, accept or adjust cap, answer any quick questions, enter public asks, set one walk-away on Limits, confirm it is absent from What the seller receives on stage 8, then leave the draft unsent (or send in a sandbox).

3.4a Compose in the seller proposal studio

When you Build Proposal from a physical Sales simulation, you open the Sales proposal studio: a checklist of ten sections on the left and one section at a time on the right, organised around the price card. Evidence swaps the section for the simulation behind the draft, and Explanations opens field notes and suggestions in a drawer. This is the home for physical seller composition on a generator site. A virtual Sales simulation opens the four-stage seller virtual studio instead (§3.4d) — same stage spine as the buyer virtual compose (§3.4b), but organised around the strike ladder, not a per-contract-type price card. On the physical path the buyer has not chosen a shape yet, so you quote one price per supported contract type. Every priced row is visible to the buyer; your floors stay on the private brief.

Selling from a trader pool is the same kind of studio — price card, warranty / spill / green, public asks vs private floors, readiness-gated Send to buyer — but the seat, deal type, and a few stages differ. That path is §3.4f · Trader Sell Proposal Studio; do not use this IPP chapter as the walkthrough when you promoted from Simulations.

The header. The studio’s one title is Sales proposal, with the parties under it (IPP 1 (Seller) → SIM Canal Walk Load · from IPP1 Sandton Solar) and the draft reference once, on the line below. That line also says how drafts behave: edits save as you make them, nothing reaches the counterparty until you send, and you can resume from Commercial → Open proposals. Keep draft & exit takes you back to Commercial with the draft kept; it refuses while an edit has a save error. Discard draft sits beside it and asks before it deletes the draft.

Stages (reading order).

Suggestions. Warranty and related fields arrive with a suggested value, rationale, and Accept / Adjust / Why? — same affordance as the buyer studio. Accepting stamps the brief (source: derived) and writes the value into the draft; Adjusting records your override while keeping the original suggestion for audit. Suggested values read as the field’s own options (Two-part, Banked, Spot market), and Why? explains in words, not formula codes.

Explanations beside the section. On a screen 1280 px or wider the page makes room for the drawer, so you keep editing while it is open; the checklist becomes an icon rail with the same section statuses (a dot marks a section with something to resolve), and on 1536 px or wider the full checklist stays. Opening it moves keyboard focus into the drawer, and closing it (the X, or Escape) puts focus back on Explanations. Below 1280 px the drawer opens over a backdrop instead.

What the buyer sees of your card. All priced rows. Not your floors. Stage 9’s What the buyer receives never includes walk-aways.

Where decisions land. Stage 2 writes physical_terms.tariff_type (and TOU multipliers when the tariff is TOU-linked) plus the public seller_price_card (prices only — floors stay on the brief). Stages 3–5 write the remaining seller-owned slices of physical_terms (autosave). Stage 6 writes requested_joint_terms. Stage 7 writes only your negotiating brief. Stage 0 sets proposal_type. Nothing reaches the buyer until stage 9’s Send to buyer.

Changes save as you go — and Undo

Every field saves the moment you change it; there is no Save button. After each change a notice holds at the bottom of the section while it scrolls, naming what changed — Saved. Tariff type set to Fixed. — with Undo. Undo puts back that one change: a term, a card price, a shared term, a private limit (back to blank if it was blank), or a suggestion you accepted or adjusted (its value and the brief’s accepted mark). The notice then reads Undone: … until your next change. Answers to site questions (stage 8) are saved to the site and are not undone here.

Second pass. After you send, when the buyer picks a contract_type on the PENDING proposal, the studio re-opens collapsed to that row: its price is written to energy_price_ckwh, and you confirm the now-unambiguous shape-gated fields. If they chose a shape the plant does not support, the studio surfaces the infeasibility and lets you decline with a reason.

Price-card mechanics (LCOE floor, premiums, firmness) stay taught in V4 §6; the proposal flow and each field live here. Term meanings in settlement language stay in §4.7.

Stage 0 — Instrument

Job. Choose Physical PPA or Eskom Virtual PPA before you fill the price card. Same comparison surface as the buyer studio — deep rules in §3.4c.

Example. Physical earns more margin on the stated MWh, but the buyer’s site cannot take wheeled energy this year. You choose Virtual — stage 0 records it; the rest of the studio becomes the four-stage seller virtual compose (§3.4d).

Stage 1 — Evidence

Job. Confirm you are quoting the deal you simulated — no editable commercial fields here.

Example. Impact shows solid margin and a small unsold increase; the buyer card shows a Fixed tariff preference and Banking spill — you carry that into the price card and spill stage rather than inventing preferences.

Both charts use one colour per meaning: your unsold generation is sky blue in the unsold profile and in the fit chart, contracted energy is green, and the buyer’s load is slate. Realised is in c/kWh, like the card.

When the evidence describes another deal

The evidence comes from the simulation you built the draft from. Once the draft’s capacity, its as-generated price or its term moves away from that run, an amber panel says so, with both deals side by side: It comes from the 28 September 2026 simulation of 50 MW · 60 c/kWh · 10 years. This proposal asks 12.5 MW · 67–75.1 c/kWh · 10 years. Revenue, unsold energy and the warranty margin then describe the simulated deal, not yours.

Re-run for these terms simulates the deal again with the draft’s own capacity, as-generated price and term, for the same buyer and period, and points the draft’s evidence at the new run. The panel clears when it finishes. Your brief — suggestions, accepted values and private limits — is not rebuilt. The new run is linked to the draft like the first one, so the Sales desk shows both as drafted, and discarding the draft frees both.

Stage 2 — Price card

Job. First set Tariff structure (how the energy charge is built), then publish one energy price per supported contract type. This is the commercial heart of a seller-originated draft: the buyer has not picked a shape yet, so a single energy_price_ckwh would be premature.

Tariff structure (panel above the rows)

The studio shows a Tariff structure block above the price card. Tariff type is required for Review readiness — Accept the brief suggestion or pick your own. When the type is TOU-linked, TOU multipliers appear in the same block. The buyer’s stated preference sits under the heading (The buyer asked for a fixed tariff.).

When the suggestion differs from the buyer’s ask. The advisor suggests the structure that suits the plant; a solar plant under a 35 % capacity factor, for example, gets Two-part (a monthly capacity charge plus a lower energy price). When the buyer asked for something else, an amber note says so and why — The suggestion (Two-part) differs from the buyer’s ask (Fixed). At a 27% capacity factor the plant’s fixed costs are spread over relatively few MWh … offering a two-part tariff means negotiating against their stated preference. — with Offer Fixed beside it. In Explanations the same suggestion shows Low confidence and Alternatives: Fixed (the buyer’s ask). Either choice is yours; the note clears once the draft carries the buyer’s ask.

Price rows

Visibility by shape (same gates as physical risk terms).

Rules. A price below that row’s floor is rejected. The amber banner reminds you: Visible to the buyer — every priced row is sent; floors stay private. Prices show as numbers without storage zeros (67, not 67.0000), and each row’s Price basis in Explanations says how it was built — the floor under it, its premium over the cheapest row, and the shortfall chance the premiums are scaled from.

Example. You choose Fixed under Tariff structure, then price As generated at 88 c (above a 76 c floor) and Capped at 94 c. The buyer later picks Capped → second pass writes 94 into energy_price_ckwh and unlocks the capped row’s spill fields for confirmation.

Stage 3 — Warranty

Job. Set the seller performance envelope — how much availability you guarantee and what you pay if you miss. Many rows arrive with Accept / Adjust / Why? from the brief.

Worst-case exposure. A line above the fields prices your annual cap against the modelled margin: At 1.5%/yr your worst case is R 2,971,283 a year against a modelled margin of R 3,573,548. The contract value behind it is this proposal’s own — its allocated energy, term and as-generated price (67 c/kWh × 29,565 MWh × 10 years = R 198,085,500; 1.5 % of that is R 2,971,283). The line turns amber when half or more of the margin is at risk, as here (83 %), and a rose alert replaces it when the worst case passes the margin — you can still save, but you are quoting a guarantee you may not economically honour. While the cap is blank the line asks you to set one. When the evidence describes another deal (§3.4a), the line names that run and offers Re-run for these terms.

A blank warranty is confirmed, not defaulted. With no guaranteed availability, an amber note says the buyer has no remedy if the plant under-delivers. You can still send, but Review & send lists No availability warranty as a warning to acknowledge, and the send itself refuses without that acknowledgement. A guarantee with no annual penalty cap is the same: Shortfall penalties are uncapped.

The availability guarantee device. Below the shortfall fields, the optional Availability guarantee device shows only Include this device until you switch it on; off, the shortfall terms above are your warranty. On, it adds its own availability level, measurement and liquidated damages (a pre-agreed payment per point of availability below the guarantee): basis, rate and cap.

Example. Accept availability 92% and adjust annual penalty cap to 10% after the warning. Draft carries both; stage 9 shows them to the buyer.

Stage 4 — Spill

Job. What happens to energy the plant produces that the buyer does not take, and how seller-caused curtailment is remedied. Plant-level (not per-shape) once you are past the price card.

BRP gate. Without a BRP on the strategy book, Spot market is removed from the disposal select and rejected server-side (Spot-market disposal needs a BRP registration on this book).

Example. No BRP → you choose buy-back disposal and Credit for seller-caused curtailment. Draft carries those; the buyer never sees a spot option you cannot deliver.

Stage 5 — Green

Job. Forecasting posture and renewable / carbon attributes you will support.

Example. You set forecast Submitted, nomination Single, and registry ZA-RECS. The buyer’s Scope 2 choice (Market vs Location) remains their field — you do not silently overwrite it.

Stage 6 — Shared terms

Job. Size and commercial envelope the buyer will see. Joint asks on requested_joint_terms, not private floors. The checklist calls this section Shared terms.

Volumes are checked against the deal. The suggestions size the take-or-pay minimum and the capped limit on this deal’s share of the plant — a 12.5 MW slice of a 50 MW plant on a quarter of its yield — so take-or-pay never exceeds the energy the deal allocates or the deal’s own poor-year (P90) yield, and the cap sits about 10 % above the allocation. Whatever you type, the section checks it under the field:

Example. Ask 12.5 MW · 29,565 MWh/yr · 10 years · CPI, with a take-or-pay minimum of 27,791 MWh/yr and a cap of 32,522 MWh/yr. Stage 9 shows every figure; your floor prices stay on stage 7.

Stage 7 — Private limits

Job. Record floors and walk-aways the buyer must never see. Banner on the stage says so; stage 9’s buyer-eye preview omits every row here.

Setting a public price-card price equal to the private floor triggers the disclosure warning (you are about to show your floor). Each row names the limit in words (Price floor · As generated, Annual penalty cap) with its target beside it (Target 10 years).

Stage 8 — Q&A

Job. Answer the site preferences this proposal needs when the generator site’s record lacks them (sites set up before the current wizard) — not a routine stage for complete sites. Each answer is saved to the site, so it is asked once.

These buttons are real saves when shown — not decorative. Complete sites from the current wizard never see this panel.

Stage 9 — Review & send

Job. Clear readiness, see exactly what the buyer receives, set how long the quote stands, then Send to buyer.

Example. The buyer receives three priced rows, availability 92%, a 10% penalty cap, buy-back spill, and 12.5 MW · 29,565 MWh/yr · 10 years · CPI. Readiness is clear → expiry 14 days → Send. Your 76 c floors never appear.

After send — second pass. When the buyer selects e.g. CAPPED, reopen the studio: the CAPPED row price lands on energy_price_ckwh, spill fields for CAPPED become unambiguous, and you confirm or decline if the shape is unsupported.

Follow along (fields). Seat: IPP / Sales. Path: simulate a sale → Build Proposal. Walk stages 2–9: price two shapes above floor, accept warranty suggestions (or adjust the penalty cap), set spill without spot-market disposal if you have no BRP, check the take-or-pay minimum against the allocated energy on Shared terms, set one private floor on Limits, confirm it is absent from What the buyer receives, then leave the draft unsent (or send in a sandbox). Undo any change you did not mean from the notice at the bottom of the section.

3.4b Compose a virtual proposal (studio)

When you Build Proposal from a virtual Procurement simulation, you open the four-stage buyer virtual studio — not the physical eight. The seller virtual path (Sales) uses the same stage numbers and evidence column but different Strike / Obligations controls; that walkthrough is §3.4d. Shared spine and matched-shapes reading live here; seller-only detail (ladder, LCOE, insurance Q&A) lives in §3.4d.

There is no contract-type picker, no TOU allocation %, no spill/wheeling charge sheet: energy is never delivered, so those physical controls stay off the screen.

The header party line names both sides — e.g. OffTaker A (Buyer) → IPP 2 · Tshwane Solar Park (Seller) — so you always know who you are quoting against.

Stages (reading order).

Suggestions. Strike and obligation fields that the brief can decide arrive with a suggested value, a one-line rationale, and Accept / Adjust / Why? — same pattern as physical. Accepting records source: derived on the brief; Adjusting keeps the original suggestion for audit. Buyer suggestions write into virtual_terms paths (e.g. cap → strike_price.cap_price_ckwh), never into physical cap_price_ckwh.

Asks vs limits. Stage 4’s public joint asks become part of what the counterparty sees. Private walk-aways stay on your negotiating brief; the dispatch preview shows only the public sheet.

Where decisions land. Stages 2–3 write virtual_terms (and the seller’s public virtual_strike_ladder on stage 2). Stage 4 writes requested_joint_terms (asks) and brief positions (limits). Stage 0 sets proposal_type. Nothing reaches the counterparty until stage 4’s Send.

Autosave still writes as you move. Term meanings in settlement language stay in §4.7 and §9; here the focus is what you set in the studio and what the draft carries.

Stage 0 — Instrument

Job. Confirm Eskom Virtual PPA (or switch back to Physical) before you fill strike and obligations. Deep comparison rules live in §3.4c.

Example. Off-taker and IPP are both Eskom-connected and VWA-ready → badges show Both available. Virtual matched fraction is high and first flow is faster → you stay on Virtual; stages 1–4 then show virtual fields only.

Stage 1 — Evidence

Job. Confirm the hedge you simulated — matched shapes and eligibility — before you set money. No editable commercial fields here.

How to read Matched shapes (24h)

This is the virtual deal’s risk picture before you set strike. Energy is never delivered; what matters is when the plant produces relative to when the buyer consumes. The panel is evidence only — you do not edit shapes here. (Buyer seat: your load. Seller seat: their load against your generation.)

Axes and wash. The chart is a typical 24-hour day (SAST hours 0h … 23h on the x-axis). Relative intensity sits on the y-axis (a normalised profile for comparison, not a contract MWh total). An amber daylight wash marks roughly 06:30–17:30; slate marks night — use that to see whether solar humps sit under daytime load or waste into evening peaks.

Source label (top-right of the fraction strip): Metered history when enough real samples back the shapes; otherwise Synthetic profile (modelled from site technology / book assumptions). The fraction number is the same definition either way; metered is usually the stronger commercial claim.

The big number — matched fraction. Above the chart: matched fraction = Σ_hours min(generation, consumption) ÷ Σ_hours generation (glossary). Only that overlapping energy earns an Eskom WER credit on a virtual PPA (§9). Unmatched generation earns no credit — and may still attract CfD strike depending on the settlement volume basis you choose on Strike.

The three series (legend under the plot — same names in the studio):

How to read the chart (step by step).

1. Pick an hour (tooltip on hover, or eye-ball a band). Compare Generation vs Consumption at that hour.
2. Matched at that hour is the smaller of the two — the overlap.
3. Where Generation sits above Consumption, the excess is unmatched generation (plant made kWh you were not using then).
4. Where Consumption sits above Generation, the buyer still buys the shortfall from Eskom as usual — that hour simply contributes less matched hedge.
5. Sum those hourly matched slices, divide by total generation → the matched fraction badge. Do not compare daily totals with a single min(Σgen, Σcons) — that overstates match when gen and load trade dominance inside the day (the same trap settlement avoids).

What good / bad looks like.

Example. Matched fraction 72%, eligibility green (both Eskom + registration ready) → proceed to Strike. Chart shows solar under daytime factory load with a visible unmatched midday tip and thin evening match — that is the matching-risk story you carry into settlement-volume basis. If eligibility is red (e.g. offtaker not Eskom-connected), fix sites or switch instrument — do not invent a strike on a blocked pair.

The compact Matched shapes panel also reappears on Strike and Dispatch so you keep the overlap in view while setting money and sending.

Stage 2 — Strike

Job. Who carries matching risk, and what strike / protection numbers sit on the public offer. This is the largest economic stage on a virtual deal.

Settlement volume basis — no silent default. You must choose:

The stage shows a short explanation beside the control; §9 walks the cash flows.

Buyer controls (stage 2)

Suggestions. Cap and settlement basis often arrive from the virtual brief (credit rate, matched fraction, break-even vs grid). Accept / Adjust / Why? stamp the brief the same way as physical. Setting the public cap equal to your private walk-away fires a disclosure warning — you are about to show your reservation price.

Draft vs brief. Cap on this stage is the ask on the proposal. Your walk-away (“I leave above 105”) belongs on stage 4 private limits.

Seller controls (stage 2)

Strike ladder (seller). Quoted rates are public; private floors never appear on the ladder or in the buyer-eye preview. The expiry window on stage 4 is also how long the quote stands (ladder computed today).

Example (buyer). You choose MATCHED, accept suggested cap 95 c/kWh, set tariff category to your Megaflex class. Draft carries those three; seller later answers with a ladder you review on Dispatch.

Stage 3 — Obligations

Job. Soft obligations and gates before the VWA can go live — role splits what you edit.

Buyer controls (stage 3)

Seller controls (stage 3)

Suggestions. Availability warranty and Scope 2 often arrive from the brief with Accept / Adjust / Why?.

Example (seller). Accept 97% availability, confirm insurance defaults, tick VWA registration and smart metering on CP. Buyer sees performance and insurance on review; your private LD floor (if any) stays off the public sheet.

Stage 4 — Dispatch

Job. Size the public envelope, set private walk-aways, clear readiness, choose expiry, then Send.

Public joint asks

Private limits (never sent)

Walk-aways, min/max acceptable, and targets live on the brief only. The counterparty preview must not contain them.

Preview, readiness, send

Example (buyer). Preview shows MATCHED · cap 95 c/kWh · 5 MW · 10y · CPI. Readiness was blocking on missing cap until you accepted the stage-2 suggestion → expiry 14 days → Send to seller. Seller sees that sheet only; your 105 c/kWh walk-away never appears.

Example (seller). Preview shows GENERATED · FLAT 88 c/kWh ladder · 5 MW · 10y. Floors absent. Send to buyer; expiry is also the quote window.

Follow along (buyer virtual). Seat: Off-taker A (Organization). Path: Procurement → run / open a virtual simulation → Build Proposal. Confirm the party line names your site and the IPP. Walk stages 0–4: keep Virtual on Instrument, check matched fraction on Evidence, set settlement basis and Accept (or Adjust) cap on Strike, tick Scope 2 / any CP on Obligations, set one private walk-away on Dispatch, confirm it is absent from the seller-eye preview, then leave unsent (or send in a sandbox). Seller virtual walkthrough → §3.4d.

3.4c Choosing between a physical and a virtual deal

Stage 0 — Instrument sits ahead of Evidence in every compose studio. It is where you see both instruments side by side before you fill terms.

What the studio shows. What this deal is worth to you each way, on a stated volume of energy (the volume basis is in the line — not a tooltip). What we think it is worth to them, labelled plainly as an estimate from what they told you (disclosed terms only). It never picks for you. Below the materiality threshold review stays silent; compose still states both positions.

What cannot be folded into Rand. Matching risk, delivery risk, and how long each instrument takes to start first flow are listed as differences, not buried inside the money figure. If only one instrument is available for the pair, the stage collapses to one line that says which and why not — the same wording as the search modal.

When it opens first. The studio still opens on Evidence (or the seller’s price-card stage) unless both instruments are available and the difference is material for you. Switching instrument on a draft creates a new draft of the other type and withdraws the old one; shared asks carry as suggestions, and the price cap is never carried (its meaning changes). Countering later tells the other side what your analysis found — the disclosure warning lives here because this is where you see both sides.

3.4.1 Before you can send

Sending is gated at the action, not only in the UI. The system checks the sending party’s slice before a draft can become PENDING. Physical stage 8 / 9 (and virtual stage 4) list failures and keep Send disabled until they clear; some warnings require an acknowledgement checkbox first.

What must be filled in. Your side of the sheet: every field that applies under the chosen contract type, plus a private negotiating brief with a walk-away on price and on capacity (buyer). Sellers need at least one priced row on the price card, tariff / forecast / nomination fields, and coherent floors.

What the system will stop you doing (hard limits). These are physical impossibilities — they block, and you cannot acknowledge past them:

• term longer than remaining plant life, start before COD, or capacity above what the seller can still sell
• a seller price-card row below the plant’s LCOE (cost floor)
• SPOT_MARKET excess disposal without a BRP registration
• a contract type the seller’s plant does not support

Warnings you can accept responsibility for. These look similar to hard limits but are not: the send is allowed only if you acknowledge them.

• Knowingly thin (seller): the ask is above LCOE but below the buyer’s ceiling — a strategic low price, not a below-cost quote. Below LCOE still blocks; this path does not.
• Firm-block decline: the plant’s firmness check would decline the shape — you may still send after acknowledgement.
• Penalty cap above modelled margin: worst-case penalties exceed the deal’s modelled margin — warn only.

Eskom / VWA readiness gaps on the buyer site stay advisory (shown for compose, not a send block). Virtual proposals use a separate readiness checklist (joint asks, settlement volume basis, strike / ladder, insurance, eligibility) — not this physical one. A low matched fraction on a virtual deal is a warning you can acknowledge, not a hard block.

The sender also chooses how long the offer stands (§3.2) via the expiry control on physical stage 8 / 9 or virtual stage 4 (“Valid until … — N days”).

3.4.2 The detail modal — review and counterparty

Once a proposal is on the list (or you open a received PENDING), the detail modal is the review surface. Its header pill tells you which hat you wear: You are the Buyer / Seller. The body walks: parties → deal structure → indicative terms → billing responsibility → estimated PPA cost → the contract terms form → message, expiry, timeline.

The form is governed by party assignment: every field carries a chip — Seller (emerald), Buyer (sky), Joint (slate), Auto (amber, derived) — and you can edit only your own side. What you see is always the merged sheet; what you can write is your slice.

For physical proposals, contract type prunes spill / shortfall / TOU fields the same way as the studio. For virtual proposals the indicative price is labelled Strike Price, and the billing panel becomes the CfD settlement triangle — strike settlement, the buyer’s full Eskom bill, and the WER credit back.

3.4.3 Suggestions in the modal (a draft with no simulation)

A draft raised straight from market search — no simulation behind it — used to open with your entire half of the term sheet blank. The indicative terms and the estimated PPA cost were the only numbers on the page.

Your fields now arrive suggested. Each one you own carries the same Accept / Adjust / Why? row as the studios, tagged Based on both parties’ records, and a banner above the form counts what is still outstanding and offers Apply all.

Nothing is written until you act. Accepting writes that one value into the proposal terms; Apply all writes every outstanding one; adjusting records your number instead. Until you send, none of it reaches the counterparty. And you only ever see your side: the seller’s suggestions are invisible to the buyer and vice versa.

Selling — what the seller’s rows come from. These are the IPP §3 rules the seller studio uses, run against your plant’s own record, the buyer’s stated preferences, and this proposal’s indicative terms:

Buying — what the buyer’s rows come from. The mirror image, from the OFFTAKER §3 rules the buyer studio uses:

The contract type sits in its own block above the form because it decides which other terms even exist. Apply all never writes it — it is the one field the counterparty is waiting on, so you choose it deliberately.

Trading. A trader pool is not a plant and not a load, so it gets what it can actually stand behind and nothing else:

• selling — the shape-derived rows drop away (a pool has no generation profile to shape a price against, and no single plant whose availability it could warrant) and the Trader Seller Terms appear in their place: source guarantee, minimum portfolio capacity, replacement energy source and the licence warranty, all read off your actual supply book. SPOT_MARKET disposal is offered only when your book carries a BRP registration.
• buying — you get the contract type, the reporting cadence and your Trader Buyer Terms structure (back-to-back pricing and margin type, read off your own settlement configuration). The cap, curtailment, spill and Scope 2 rows stay blank: those read an off-taker site’s grid tariff and stated preferences, and a pool has neither.

Fields that stay blank on purpose. A capacity charge only belongs to a TWO_PART / BLENDED structure and a floor price only to a floating one; under FIXED neither is suggested, and the tariff row says so. Anything the chosen contract type prunes from the form is dropped from the suggestions too, so the banner never counts a row you cannot see.

What none of it knows. A search-created draft carries no cost model on either side, so:

• the seller’s floor price is a disclosed negotiating position the buyer will see — never your private walk-away;
• the seller’s penalty caps are the opening 8%/yr ask, not clamped against your margin the way the studio clamps them;
• the buyer’s cap is read off the published tariff table, not a swept break-even, and the trader’s margin number is never suggested at all — nothing here prices what you can on-sell at.

If you want those numbers costed, build the deal in the buyer or seller studio from a simulation instead: the simulation supplies the LCOE, the sweep and the modelled margin, and the suggestions come off your private brief.

3.4d Compose in the seller virtual proposal studio

When you Build Proposal from a virtual Sales simulation, you open the four-stage Seller Virtual Proposal Studio — not the physical nine-stage price-card studio (§3.4a). You share the stage spine with the buyer virtual compose (§3.4b), but the commercial heart is the strike ladder (FLAT + TOU public rates) instead of a buyer cap, and Obligations are performance + insurance, not Scope 2.

There is still no contract-type picker, no per-shape price card, no spill / wheeling / shortfall sheet, and no second pass after send: the ladder is the quote. Floors stay on your private brief (price_card.FLAT / price_card.TOU); the buyer-eye preview never shows them.

The header party line names both sides — e.g. OffTaker A (Buyer) → IPP 2 · Tshwane Solar Park (Seller).

How this differs from physical seller (§3.4a) and buyer virtual (§3.4b)

Suggestions. Availability warranty (and related brief fields) arrive with Accept / Adjust / Why? — same affordance as physical. Accepting stamps the brief and writes into virtual_terms; Adjusting keeps the original suggestion for audit. Ladder rates are public edits on the draft; ladder floors are private-limit writes on the brief.

Where decisions land. Stage 2 writes virtual_terms.settlement_volume_basis and the public virtual_strike_ladder (rates only). Stage 3 writes virtual_terms.performance_terms, insurance_terms, and conditions_precedent. Stage 4 writes requested_joint_terms and brief limits. Stage 0 sets proposal_type. Nothing reaches the buyer until stage 4 Send.

Stage 0 — Instrument

Job. Confirm Eskom Virtual PPA (or switch back to Physical) before you quote the ladder. Same comparison surface as every compose studio — deep rules in §3.4c.

Example. Physical margin looks better on stated MWh, but the offtaker is VWA-ready and matched fraction is high → stay on Virtual; stages 1–4 show ladder and performance only. Switching from a physical draft re-derives virtual advisor positions (availability, settlement prompt) from the linked simulation — it does not copy your physical energy prices into the ladder.

Stage 1 — Evidence

Job. Confirm the hedge you simulated — matched shapes and eligibility — before you quote. No editable commercial fields here.

Same left-column panels as the buyer virtual studio (§3.4b Stage 1), including how to read Matched shapes (24h).

Example. Matched fraction 71%, eligibility green → proceed to Strike. A tall midday unmatched band argues for MATCHED settlement (you absorb unmatched) or a smaller capacity ask — not for inventing a FLAT rate below LCOE to “win” the deal.

Stage 2 — Strike

Job. Set who carries matching risk, then publish the strike ladder. This replaces the physical price card: two public structures (FLAT and TOU), not one row per contract type.

Settlement volume basis — no silent default (same three options as buyer — §3.4b):

Strike ladder (seller-only)

How to read the ladder vs the physical price card.

• Physical: one price per AS_GENERATED / FIRM / … — buyer picks a shape later.
• Virtual: FLAT and TOU are alternative strike structures for the same hedge — both can be quoted; floors never appear in the buyer-eye preview.
• Expiry on Dispatch is also the quote window (ladder aged from today).
• Setting a public rate equal to your private floor fires a disclosure warning — you are about to show your reservation price.

Suggestions. Settlement basis often arrives as a prompt (no silent pick). Ladder rates may be prefilled from the virtual advisor (LCOE + margin, credit-aware TOU); you still edit them as public numbers.

Example. Choose GENERATED, quote FLAT 88 c/kWh with private floor 80, and a TOU row lined up with Megaflex credit bands. Draft carries both public rows; floors stay on the brief. Buyer later sees rates only.

Stage 3 — Obligations

Job. Plant-side soft obligations and gates before the VWA can go live — not the buyer’s Scope 2 panel.

Suggestions. Availability warranty commonly arrives with Accept / Adjust / Why? from the brief (capacity factor / p_short envelope). Over-committing availability relative to what the plant can support is a hard readiness block — acknowledgement does not clear it.

Insurance Q&A (inline). If the generator site has no cover on file, the studio asks the same insurance questions the physical Q&A stage would — answers persist to the site (asked once) and unlock the insurance embed. Complete sites never see the panel.

Example. Accept 97% availability, confirm insurance defaults (or answer Q&A once), tick VWA registration and smart metering. Buyer sees performance and insurance on review; your private LD / floor numbers stay off that sheet.

Stage 4 — Dispatch

Job. Size the public envelope, set private walk-aways, clear readiness, choose expiry, then Send to buyer.

Public joint asks

Same joint fields as buyer virtual (§3.4b Stage 4): capacity, term, start date, VWP vendor, settlement frequency, escalation. No contract-type, TOU allocation, spill, or wheeling charges.

Private limits (never sent)

Preview, readiness, send

Example. Preview shows GENERATED · FLAT 88 · TOU 110/90/70 · 5 MW · 10y · CPI — floors absent. Readiness was blocking on a blank TOU off-peak until you filled it → expiry 14 days → Send to buyer. Buyer never sees your 80 c floor.

Follow along (seller virtual). Seat: IPP 2 (ipp_2@webill.net). Path: Sales → run / open a virtual simulation → Build Proposal. Confirm the party line names the offtaker and your plant. Walk stages 0–4: keep Virtual on Instrument, read matched fraction on Evidence (§3.4b chart guide), choose settlement basis and quote FLAT (and optionally TOU) above private floors on Strike, Accept availability on Obligations (answer insurance Q&A if shown), set one private floor on Dispatch, confirm it is absent from the buyer-eye preview, then leave unsent (or send in a sandbox).

3.4e Compose in the trader buy proposal studio

When you Build Proposal from a Buy → IPP simulation on a trader pool Simulations workbench, you land in the full-page Trader Buy Proposal Studio — not the org proposals list and not the offtaker buyer proposal studio. The deal type is TRADER_IPP: your pool is the buyer; the generator site is the seller. The draft stays private until you Send to seller.

Same spine as the offtaker buyer studio (§3.4)

If you already know §3.4, most of the UX is familiar on purpose:

• A checklist of sections, Evidence and Explanations one click from each; autosave
• Shape → Price → Risk → Green → public Asks → private Limits → Review
• Shared buyer fields: contract type (+ TOU when SHAPED), cap / ceiling, curtailment / spill / shortfall (pruned by contract type), Scope 2 method, joint asks, walk-aways on the brief
• Accept / Adjust / Why? suggestions; disclosure warning when a public cap equals your private walk-away
• Stage 8 readiness, expiry (3–90 days, default 14), Send to seller → DRAFT → PENDING

Reuse §3.4 for what those shared fields mean. This section names only what changes for the trader seat.

How this differs from the buyer studio (§3.4)

Stages (reading order)

Stage 4 — Trader terms

Job. Say how the pool earns and whether pricing is back-to-back with the plant. These fields are why a trader buyer is not an offtaker clone — they have no home on the offtaker studio.

Suggestions. Structure (type / back-to-back) may arrive from the pool’s settlement config with Accept / Adjust / Why?. Margin numbers are never auto-written — you type them.

On this stage the evidence column swaps to impact + IPP candidate so you can set margin against the deal you simulated, not against an empty chart.

Suggestions, asks, and where decisions land

Suggestions. Shape, price, risk, green, and trader-terms fields arrive with Accept / Adjust / Why? from the private negotiating brief built at promote time. Accepting records source: derived; Adjusting records your override.

Asks vs limits. Stage 6’s public asks become part of what the IPP sees. Stage 7’s walk-aways stay on your brief; stage 8’s What the seller receives lists every term you set — Delivery profile, Price protection, Risk, Trader terms, Green, and Volume, term and settlement — and nothing from the brief: search it for a walk-away and you will not find one. It reads the same way as the off-taker studio’s (§3.4 Stage 8).

Where decisions land. Stages 1–5 write physical_terms (autosave). Stage 6 writes requested_joint_terms. Stage 7 writes only your negotiating brief. Nothing reaches the IPP until stage 8’s Send to seller.

Bridge. Simulations promote → this studio: V3 §8.6. Selling from the same pool uses the trader sell studio. Trader-to-trader stays refused with the V2-open copy on Simulations — no studio until VWA registration for traders is modelled (decisions V2).

Follow along. Seat: a trader pool with a completed Buy → IPP simulation. Path: Simulations → Buy → select an IPP → Simulate → Build Proposal. Confirm the party line names your org as buyer and the IPP as seller. Confirm there is no Instrument tab. Walk stages 0–8: set contract type, accept a cap suggestion, fill Trader terms (margin type + back-to-back), confirm the private banner on Limits, then on Review check walk-aways are absent and What the seller receives lists your margin type and back-to-back choice under Trader terms before Send to seller.

3.4f Compose in the trader sell proposal studio

When you Build Proposal from a Sell → OffTaker simulation on a trader pool Simulations workbench, you land in the full-page Trader Sell Proposal Studio — not the org proposals list and not the IPP seller proposal studio. The deal type is OFFTAKER_TRADER: your pool is the seller; the offtaker site is the buyer. The draft stays private until you Send to buyer.

Same spine as the seller studio (§3.4a)

If you already know §3.4a, most of the UX is familiar on purpose:

• A checklist of sections, Evidence and Explanations one click from each; autosave
• Tariff structure + public price card (floors private on the brief)
• Warranty → Spill → Green → public Asks → private Limits → Review
• Shared seller fields: shortfall / availability envelope, spill & curtailment (spot-market disposal only with a BRP), forecast / nomination / REC, joint asks, private floors
• Accept / Adjust / Why? suggestions; disclosure warning when a public price equals a private walk-away
• Every priced row below its floor is a hard block (withdraw rather than walk twenty fields)
• After send, when the buyer picks a contract_type, the studio re-opens collapsed to that row (second pass) — same as IPP
• Review readiness, expiry (3–90 days, default 14), Send to buyer → DRAFT → PENDING

Reuse §3.4a for what those shared fields mean (price-card mechanics also in V4 §6). This section names only what changes for the trader seat.

How this differs from the seller studio (§3.4a)

Stages (reading order)

Stage 4 — Trader terms

Job. State the portfolio guarantees behind the quote. These fields are why a trader seller is not an IPP clone — they have no home on the plant studio.

Suggestions. These fields may arrive with Accept / Adjust / Why? from the trader seller advisor. Accepting records source: derived; Adjusting records your override.

Suggestions, asks, second pass, and where decisions land

Suggestions. Price, warranty, spill, green, and trader-terms fields arrive with Accept / Adjust / Why? from the private negotiating brief built at promote time. Public price-card rows never carry floors — those stay on price_card.* walk-aways on the brief.

Asks vs limits. Stage 6’s public asks become part of what the offtaker sees. Stage 7’s walk-aways stay on your brief; stage 8’s What the buyer receives lists every public term — Prices (each card row and the tariff type), Warranty, Spill and curtailment, Portfolio guarantees, Green and forecasting, and Volume, term and settlement — and nothing from the brief: search it for a walk-away and you will not find one. A public value that equals your private walk-away raises a disclosure warning.

Second pass. After you send, when the offtaker picks a contract_type on the PENDING proposal, the studio re-opens collapsed to that row — price written to energy_price_ckwh, shape-gated fields confirmed — same discipline as §3.4a.

Where decisions land. Stages 1–5 write physical_terms and the public seller_price_card (autosave). Stage 6 writes requested_joint_terms. Stage 7 writes only your negotiating brief. Nothing reaches the offtaker until stage 8’s Send to buyer.

Bridge. Simulations promote → this studio: V3 §8.6. Buying for the same pool uses the trader buy studio. Trader-to-trader stays refused with the V2-open copy on Simulations — no studio until VWA registration for traders is modelled (decisions V2).

Follow along. Seat: a trader pool with saleable inventory and a completed Sell → OffTaker simulation. Path: Simulations → Sell → select an offtaker → Simulate → Build Proposal. Confirm the party line names your org as seller and the offtaker as buyer. Confirm there is no Instrument or Q&A tab. Walk stages 0–8: accept price/tariff suggestions, fill Trader terms (all five gates), confirm the private banner on Limits, then on Review check walk-aways are absent from What the buyer receives and your guarantees appear under Portfolio guarantees before Send to buyer.

3.5 Your private negotiating brief

Alongside the public proposal, the platform holds a negotiating brief for your side — what you want on each term, and what you will not accept. That record is yours alone: the other party never sees it, and it is never sent with the proposal. What they see are only your stated asks on the proposal itself (indicative capacity and term, party-coded contract fields, a seller price card when you are selling).

Two things readers often mix up:

• A target is what you would prefer; a walk-away (or private floor) is the line you will not cross. Both live on your brief (studio stage 7). They guide your own decisions; neither is disclosed — stage 8’s seller-eye preview never includes them.
• Some contract terms that look like floors or caps — a published price floor, a price cap on the offer — are sent when they are part of the commercial offer. Those are asks on the proposal, not private reservation prices on the brief.

The studio writes into the brief as you Accept / Adjust suggestions and set private limits. Walk-aways stay private; asks are what the other side can respond to.

3.5a Reviewing a proposal you received

When a proposal lands in your inbox as Pending, open the review studio (Procurement or Sales → the proposal → Review). One page, both directions: you reading a seller offer and you reading a buyer offer are the same stages with the roles swapped. Physical proposals use six stages; virtual proposals use five (asks and private limits share a stage).

Those working notes are a review draft — private. You can try prices, cadences, and shortfall settings without the sender seeing every half-formed number. Nothing you stage is written to the shared proposal until you Accept (which merges your side into the contract in one step) or you deliberately choose to share my terms now — an optional escape hatch when you want to show your hand early to speed agreement. Autosave never touches the shared virtual_terms / physical_terms while you are still deciding.

If the proposal expires while you are still working on it, those notes are discarded. You will see a warning first, inside the last 20% of the sender’s validity window (§3.2) — especially on the Decide stage. Ask the sender to renew if you need more time; a renewal starts you fresh against the new window’s numbers. Declining is different — your notes are kept so a later re-propose can pick them up.

Reading order in the studio (physical):

Virtual review uses the same spine with two differences on stage 1, and asks + limits folded into one stage before Decide:

On a virtual offer you can already see their strike, so stage 2 can show your actual net cost on your load shape — arithmetic, not a guess. Watch the seller’s min_offtake_pct in performance terms: that is a buyer volume obligation, easy to miss inside a joint embed.

3.5b Is this offer good enough?

Once you have a negotiating brief, the platform can run a gap analysis against what they actually offered. Per term it marks the offer:

• acceptable — at or better than your target, or inside the range you set;
• worth pushing back on — outside target but still inside your walk-away; or
• a dealbreaker — beyond your walk-away.

Where the gap is a price (c/kWh), you also get an annual Rand figure so “12c above target” becomes something like “R840k a year” — not an abstract delta. Non-price terms stay qualitative.

Instrument comparison (when it matters). Above the field table — never inside it — you may see one line such as “as a CfD this deal is R1.4m/yr better for you, on matched volume — see Instrument.” It appears only when the other instrument is available for the pair and the difference is material for you. Otherwise the line is simply absent (not a “no difference” banner). The volume basis is in the sentence. Compose still shows both verdicts even when the gap is small — there you asked the question; here you did not.

Two overrides matter:

• A dealbreaker is a warning. You can still accept with your eyes open — you acknowledge the field first.
• An impossible ask is not a warning. Wrong contract type for the plant, capacity above what is saleable, a term longer than remaining plant life, or a seller price below LCOE — those block accept. Acknowledgement does not clear them; the originator needs a feasible alternative (for example solar plants support AS_GENERATED / CAPPED / TOP, not BASELOAD).

3.5c The four exits

You do not have to walk the whole studio to say no.

1. Reject outright — from stage 1, before any panel-beating. Wrong technology, wrong province, not interested. No private draft is required.
2. Accept after panel-beating — Decide (physical stage 6 / virtual stage 5), once your receiving slice is ready, there are no unacknowledged dealbreakers or infeasibilities, and the digest still matches. Accept merges your staged terms and creates the PPA in one transaction.
3. Reject after panel-beating — same decline as (1), optionally with structured findings (below).
4. Counter in the other instrument — also on Decide; gate and disclosure are taught once in §3.5e.

Digest guard. If the other side changes their terms while you are reviewing, accept is blocked and the changed fields are named (old → new). Re-read them, acknowledge, then accept again — you cannot be signed up to a price you never saw.

The list modal still serves accepted / declined read-back, lineage links, and the originator’s sent phase; the review studio is the home for deciding. Counter with… lives only on Decide — one home for the action.

3.5d Declining well, and trying again

A decline need not be a dead end with a free-text apology. It can carry decline findings — which terms did not work and what would have — drawn from your negotiating target, never your private walk-away. You choose, field by field, what to share: dealbreakers are shared by default, merely negotiable points are held by default. If the plant simply cannot deliver what was asked (wrong shape for the technology, capacity above saleable, and so on), that finding is always shared — otherwise the next attempt fails the same way.

Re-propose clones the declined (or expired) proposal into a fresh draft with both parties’ captured slices intact. Nothing is retyped. The prior proposal becomes SUPERSEDED and stays linked. Re-propose inherits the renewal budget (renewed_count / max 3) — it does not reset it — so you cannot defeat the renewal cap by cloning forever (§3.2). Opening the compose studio on the new draft shows the prior findings as a checklist of what to change — their value, what they would have accepted, your current value, and your own brief target. An infeasible shape finding also removes the impossible option from the contract-type control so you cannot send the same impossible request twice.

Same-instrument negotiation still has no price counter-offer loop at proposal stage: each round is propose → review → accept-or-decline. Findings are how disagreement travels between rounds. Answering in the other instrument is different — see §3.5e.

3.5e Answering in the other instrument

A cross-instrument counter lets you answer a Pending proposal in the other instrument without refusing and starting from a blank sheet. Availability is §1.1; whether the difference is large enough to act on is the materiality threshold (same silence rule as Gaps — §3.5b). When both hold, Decide in the review studio offers Counter with an Eskom Virtual PPA or Counter with a Physical PPA. The list modal keeps lineage read-back only — it does not host the counter.

You say why the other instrument suits you — that reason is disclosed before the counter is created. You then compose a fresh draft of the other type (invisible until you send). When you send it, the original becomes superseded and stays linked; both remain readable. The counter carries shared facts where they mean the same thing (capacity, term, start date, and similar); the price cap (cap_price_ckwh) is never carried — its meaning changes between instruments. The counter gets its own expiry window but inherits the renewal budget (same rule as re-propose).

Two limits, plainly:

1. After two cross-instrument hops in the same chain, the platform stops you.
2. Returning to an instrument already left behind in that chain is refused.

On the list, a superseded row links forward to the counter; opening the counter shows which prior proposal it replaces.

3.6 The footer, phase by phase

Your options depend on the phase — your role × the proposal’s state:

Accept is the big one: in a single transaction the proposal becomes ACCEPTED, a PPA is created in NEGOTIATING with its agreement reference (PPPA-YYYYMM-… or VPPA-…), every captured term is replayed onto it (including your merged staged slice), and — for physical deals — the meter references are derived from the linked sites. Both parties’ current negotiating briefs are stamped with the new PPA id (superseded brief versions stay untouched; missing briefs are skipped). Those limits follow you into the negotiation wizard as owner-only chips — they are never shared with the counterparty. The flash names the new contract, and the deal appears on Negotiations for both parties.

Follow along. Seat: Off-taker A (offtaker_a@webill.net) — the proposal state gallery. Path: Proposals. You should see one Pending sent to IPP 2 and one Pending received from IPP 2 (both with countdowns), your two Drafts, and one each of Declined, Expired, Withdrawn and Superseded — every state of §3.1 live on one screen.

Data. full_demo · seed 42 · stage S04 (lifecycle) · sealed 2026-07-15.

Device positions in a proposal

The price and risk stages can carry upside, volume-strike, availability and termination positions. Suggestions come from the private negotiation brief; an absent position supplies no invented recommendation. Accepted device positions survive brief regeneration and the proposal-to-contract handoff. Joint price-device terms still require counterpart agreement in negotiation.

4. The negotiation wizards

Accepting a proposal (from the review studio or the list modal) creates a contract in NEGOTIATING — a live PPA whose terms both parties now complete together. What arrives in the wizard already carries both parties’ captured terms: the originator’s disclosed slice plus the receiver’s merged staged side from review. The wizards are where the remaining joint and role-owned fields get finished.

4.1 The Negotiations screen

Negotiations (/org/deals/negotiations — the Deals tab) is the home for every deal that has left the proposal handshake (§3.1) and is still being worked — from accept through AGREED (plus DECLINED rows kept for history). Once a contract becomes SIGNED or ACTIVE, it leaves this list and appears only on Contracts. Physical (PPPA-…) and virtual (VPPA-…) share the same six negotiation statuses (enum-exact on negotiation_status).

There are no stat cards — one line above the table says what the tab is for. The badge on the tab counts what needs you: term sheets still Negotiating (both sides work them) and Agreed sheets you have not signed yet. Columns: Agreement (reference, instrument pill, from proposal {ref}, topology), Parties, Where it stands (status, unseen counterparty changes, who has signed, Sign by {date}), Your next step (one primary button — Negotiate, Sign, Request / Accept revival — with secondary actions as plain links). What you can click is gated by status (table at the end of this section).

Search by site, party or agreement reference, and narrow by Status and Type. Your filters stay in the URL and survive reload. Clear filters restores the full register; the empty view offers the same recovery. On a phone, each agreement is a card and the wizard’s Go to section selector replaces the long step rail. The Negotiation guide link opens this chapter.

The screen is live per contract: if your counterparty saves a step while you’re looking at that deal, your fields refresh with a flash; if you’re elsewhere, the red change badge ticks up until you next open it.

Happy path

Exits and re-open

What each status means

Proposal vs negotiation. Proposal statuses (§3.1) end at ACCEPTED. Negotiation statuses start at NEGOTIATING on that same accept. Declining a proposal never creates a PPA; declining a negotiation leaves a DECLINED contract row in Negotiations.

Action gates — who may change status

Not allowed. You cannot re-open from SIGNED or ACTIVE. You cannot Freeze terms while joint terms are still pending or required fields are missing (server mirrors the wizard gate). You cannot sign mismatched hashes — the ceremony forces a re-sign after terms change.

What the list shows you

4.2 How negotiation editing works

Every field in both wizards carries an ownership badge — BUYER (indigo), SELLER (amber), JOINT (emerald), DERIVED (slate) — and you always act as your natural role; there is no switching hats. Single-party fields are simply yours or theirs. Derived fields (meter references, grid facts, wheeling charges) are read-only for everyone.

Joint fields run a per-field approval loop (joint terms approval):

1. You enter a value and Save the step → the field goes PENDING, proposed by you. It stays editable for you; your counterparty sees “Counterparty proposed — your approval needed.”
2. They Approve → the field locks (APPROVED & locked), or Reject → the field opens for their counter-value, which re-pends toward you.
3. Repeat until every joint term is approved.

The whole wizard is read-only once the contract is AGREED, SUSPENDED, DECLINED, SIGNED or ACTIVE. View agreement lets you read every saved section without reopening it or clearing signatures.

4.2a Save your draft before leaving

The status above the fields tells you All changes saved or Unsaved changes. Next and Back keep your draft while this window is open. Save each edited step; saving one step does not save changes on another step.

flowchart LR
  A[Edit terms] --> B[Save each edited step]
  B --> C[Review saved terms]
  C --> D[Confirm freeze]

1. Edit the fields you own and save each changed step.
2. If you close with a draft, choose Keep editing to return or Discard and close to lose only unsaved changes. Previously saved terms remain in the agreement.
3. Choose Freeze terms when all required terms and joint approvals are complete. Review the saved sections, then Confirm freeze. Return to editing cancels the review. If saved terms change before confirmation, review the latest version again.

4.3 Your targets in the wizard

The private negotiating brief you built while proposing does not stop at accept. On accept it is stamped onto the new PPA (physical_ppa_id or virtual_ppa_id), and in the wizard only you see target / walk-away chips beside joint fields that still have a position on your brief. Your counterparty never sees your chips (or yours theirs).

Reject on a joint field pre-fills the counter-value from your brief target — you can clear or overwrite it and type a manual value before you Save.

Approve past your own walk-away does not go through silently: the wizard names the field, the value you are about to lock, and your stated limit, and asks you to confirm. You may still approve — it is recorded as a conscious decision — or keep the field pending. Approving within your walk-away does not nag.

Physical — sellers. Approving shortfall joint terms while the contract’s annual penalty cap sits above the modelled margin from your brief evidence gets an extra interrupt. Buyers never see that warning.

Virtual — buyers. Approving a settlement volume basis of Generated when your brief’s matched fraction is low gets an interrupt: you will pay strike on volume you cannot use. Sellers never see that warning.

If the brief’s inputs have moved on (for example the book was re-forecast after the brief was written), the chips stay visible but are badged advice is stale — do not treat them as current; regenerate the brief when you can.

4.4 The physical wizard — core steps, optional Top-up and Termination

Ten core sections compose the physical PPA once a proposal is accepted, followed by Termination (step 12). Top-up (step 11) opens only when the buyer is an offtaker (OFFTAKER_IPP / OFFTAKER_TRADER). A trader buyer already carries top-up economics on its pool membership, so that deal type skips step 11 and still reaches Termination. Party and site links are already fixed from the proposal; the wizard finishes the negotiable terms. Ownership badges match §4.2: Buyer, Seller, Joint (propose → approve), Derived (read-only for everyone). §4.7 summarises what each family does at settlement; this section is the field-by-field walk of the screen.

Stepper titles (exact UI labels): Parties & Sites · Connection & Network · Capacity & Allocation · Tariff & Pricing · Curtailment · Spill & Excess · Shortfall & Delivery · Metering & Settlement · RECs & Carbon · Wheeling Charges · Top-up (offtaker-buyer only) · Termination.

Which steps open. The list never renumbers. Contract type greys out steps that do not apply:

Capacity & Allocation (step 3) is also skipped when the contract type is AS_GENERATED (no capacity / volume / TOU fields to agree). Forecast status and the SCE panel live on that step, so they appear once the type needs volume terms. Contract type greys out steps 6/7 as the table above; deal type is the one thing that adds a step — Top-up (step 11) only for an offtaker buyer. Every deal also reaches Termination (step 12). Deal type also changes which tariff structures are starred, which meter references exist, and which trader terms completeness still demands (trader margins were captured in the proposal phase).

Step 1 — Parties & Sites

Purpose. Orient both seats, then lock the delivery shape and the calendar of the deal. The buyer drives contract type; start date and term are joint.

Read-only header (derived from the accepted proposal — not editable here):

Editable / joint fields:

Contract-type options (plain meaning):

Step 2 — Connection & Network

Purpose. Surface the grid facts already on each site, and capture the buyer’s security-deposit status. Almost everything here is derived so you can see blockers early; only deposit (and sometimes CUOSA / grid status) is editable.

Generator grid connection (seller site):

Buyer connection:

Step 3 — Capacity & Allocation

Purpose. Agree how much power / energy the deal covers and for how long the volume picture holds. Mostly joint commercial numbers; the seller owns forecast readiness; the buyer owns TOU shape when the type is SHAPED. Skipped for AS_GENERATED.

SCE acknowledgement (seller). When contracted volume sits above the plant’s safe contractable energy, the seller sees the SCE panel and must acknowledge the oversell before the deal can proceed honestly — the V3 capacity guard, not a buyer field.

Step 4 — Tariff & Pricing

Purpose. Seller puts the price offer on the table; buyer sets protection ceilings where the structure allows; both approve how price grows over time. Which numeric fields unlock depends on Tariff Type.

Tariff-type cheat-sheet:

Step 5 — Curtailment

Purpose. Decide who pays when energy is ready but not delivered — because the grid operator said stop, because the buyer could not take it, or because the seller caused the stop. Joint fields need both parties’ approval; buyer- and seller-caused remedies are role-owned.

Grid-operator choices in plain words: SHARED — both absorb a portion; SELLER_RISK — seller bears the cost; BUYER_RISK — buyer pays for curtailed energy; DEEMED_ALWAYS — treat as delivered and bill at contract rate.

Step 6 — Spill & Excess

Purpose. What happens when the plant (or the deal) produces more than the buyer takes, and what the buyer owes when they take less. Open only for CAPPED / BASELOAD / FIRM / SHAPED. Seller owns disposal of surplus generation; buyer owns under-consumption; banking is joint.

Step 7 — Shortfall & Delivery

Purpose. Performance warranty when the seller promised firm or shaped delivery. Open only for FIRM / TOP / BASELOAD / SHAPED. Seller supplies plant commitments and caps; buyer sets compensation and reporting; several framework fields are joint.

Excused events (yes/no toggles — when true, that cause does not count as a shortfall):

Step 8 — Metering & Settlement

Purpose. Confirm which meters settlement will read, how often you reconcile money and energy, and how the seller nominates delivery. Meter references are derived from linked sites; cadence is joint; nomination is seller-owned.

Step 9 — RECs & Carbon

Purpose. Whether environmental attributes travel with the energy, on which registry, how the buyer accounts for Scope 2, and which carbon methodology the seller uses. Enable flags and bundling are joint; registry and carbon method are seller; Scope 2 is buyer.

Step 10 — Wheeling Charges

Purpose. Show which network loss factors and use-of-system charges apply to this deal’s path. Everything is derived — nothing is editable here. Applicability was decided from the proposal’s network path and imported into the PPA on accept; rates come from tariff data and may still be blank until priced.

Loss factors (only items marked applicable are shown):

Use-of-system charges (same rule — applicable only):

If none apply, the step says so plainly — typical for a trader-to-trader deal or sites with no physical wheeling path (“No wheeling charges apply”).

Step 11 — Top-up

Purpose. Name the contract behind shortfall energy: who supplies it, at what price, under what monthly cap. The step is Buyer owned and read-only once the deal leaves NEGOTIATING. It does not appear for a trader-buyer deal — that seat edits the same fields on the pool membership form next to Shortfall top-up.

A monthly cap without a source is refused, and a trader-pool source without a named pool is refused. Both surfaces share those messages.

What each source does once the deal is active (settlement detail in V8 §7.2.1):

The membership form on Strategy → Pools carries the same fields next to Shortfall top-up, so a demand member that is not on a physical PPA can still name a term. eskom_topup_ckwh itself is unchanged — a member with no TopUpTerm prices shortfall exactly as it did before this step existed.

4.5 The virtual wizard — ten different steps

Ten steps compose the virtual PPA (CfD / Virtual Wheeling) once a proposal is accepted. Sites and deal type are already fixed; the wizard finishes the negotiable money, readiness, and legal terms. Ownership badges match §4.2: Buyer, Seller, Joint (propose → approve), Derived (read-only). Chapter §4.7 and §9 explain why the CfD and matching matter; this section is the field-by-field walk of the screen.

Stepper titles (exact UI labels): Parties & Sites · Eskom Registration · Capacity & Term · Tariff & Pricing · Generator Obligations · Metering & Settlement · RECs & Carbon · Legal Terms · Wheeling Charges · Review & Submit.

Unlike the physical wizard, every step stays open — there is no contract-type pruning. Deal type still changes who must fill the buyer’s Eskom tariff category (an off-taker buyer has one; a pure trader buyer may not).

Step 1 — Parties & Sites

Purpose. Orient both seats before you edit money terms. Everything on this step is derived from the accepted proposal — nothing is editable here.

The blue info strip reminds both sides: this is a contract for difference settled through Eskom’s Virtual Wheeling Platform — each party stays independently connected to the grid; electrons are not re-routed to the buyer.

Step 2 — Eskom Registration

Purpose. Capture the six conditions precedent (CPs) — paperwork and registrations that must be true before the virtual deal can activate. Ticking a box here means “we assert this is in place (or will be before go-live).” CPs are recorded at negotiation; they are discharged before activation, not before Freeze terms / AGREED (§4.6).

Each field is Yes / No (true / false). Prefill often comes from facts already on the site or proposal; re-asking for something already on file is a defect, not diligence (§9.7).

Step 3 — Capacity & Term

Purpose. Agree how large the hedge is and how long it runs. All three fields are joint — either side proposes; the other must approve.

Step 4 — Tariff & Pricing

Purpose. Set the strike — the price the CfD settles against — plus how it grows, floor/cap protection, the buyer’s retail tariff category (feeds the Gen-Wheeling / WER credit), and settlement volume basis (matched vs generated). Seller owns the strike structure and rates; buyer owns the cap and tariff category; escalation and volume basis are joint.

Recipient sellers. If you received the proposal without composing it in Proposal Studio, an amber banner offers Suggest / Why? on the seller rate fields (flat, TOU peak/standard/off-peak, floor). Accept or adjust before you lock your side — same idea as studio advice, inside the wizard.

Settlement volume basis in plain words:

Escalation cheat-sheet:

Step 5 — Generator Obligations

Purpose. Performance promises, what happens if the plant under-delivers, who bears curtailment risk, buyer offtake discipline, and insurance. Three blocks on one step: Performance Terms, Curtailment, Insurance.

Performance Terms

Underperformance remedies in plain words: LIQUIDATED_DAMAGES — cash per missed unit; MAKE_GOOD — deliver the missing energy later; PRICE_ADJUSTMENT — reprice the deal; NONE — no contractual remedy beyond the other terms.

Curtailment

Insurance

Step 6 — Metering & Settlement

Purpose. Choose who runs the Virtual Wheeling Platform service path and how often money and energy settle. Both fields are joint.

Step 7 — RECs & Carbon

Purpose. Whether environmental attributes travel with the hedge, on which registry, how the buyer accounts for Scope 2, and which carbon methodology the seller uses. Enable flags are joint; registry and carbon method are seller; Scope 2 is buyer.

Step 8 — Legal Terms

Purpose. Force majeure, termination triggers, payment hygiene, liability cap, disputes, regulatory change, assignment, and confidentiality. Almost everything is joint; Eskom Default and Payment Due are buyer-owned.

Force Majeure

FM definition in plain words: STANDARD — usual legal FM list; EXTENDED — broader (more events excused); NARROW — tighter (fewer excuses).

Termination Events (Yes / No — whether that event is a contractual termination trigger)

Payment & Disputes

Step 9 — Wheeling Charges

Purpose. Explain that network / Gen-Wheeling money is not negotiated as editable wizard fields. Charges and credits are determined by Eskom from the buyer’s tariff category (step 4) and published Gen-Wheeling rates. This step is read-only orientation.

What you see:

• An info panel: wheeling charges are Eskom-determined and not directly editable.

• The Wheeled Energy Refund (WER) formula in plain symbols:

  WER = Σ_TOU [ min(Consumed, Wheeled) × Gen-Wheeling Rate_TOU ]

In lay terms: for each time-of-use band, take the smaller of what the buyer consumed and what was treated as wheeled, multiply by that band’s Gen-Wheeling credit rate, then add the bands up. That refund is the credit leg of the three cash flows in §9.1.

Step 10 — Review & Submit

Purpose. Final glance before Freeze terms. The summary grid is derived from terms you already agreed — use Back (or the stepper) to change anything.

The green banner reminds you: navigate back to any step to fix gaps. The footer’s Freeze terms gate still enforces completeness and joint approvals (§4.6) — Review alone does not finalise an incomplete sheet.

4.6 Freeze terms — and the gate

Freeze terms is available when required terms and joint approvals are complete, and every local edit has been saved. It first opens read-only review of the saved version. Only Confirm freeze advances the deal to AGREED and starts the signing window. The server rejects an unsaved draft or a saved version changed since review. See §4.2a for saving and leaving safely.

What each wizard demands:

• Physical — every required term for your contract type, tariff type and deal type present, and every joint term approved.
• Virtual — capacity, start date and term; the conditions-precedent checklist captured (the CPs themselves are discharged before activation, not before agreement); a valid strike price — the flat rate for FLAT, all three TOU rates for TOU, plus an escalation rate when the mechanism needs one; the buyer’s Eskom tariff category when the buyer is an off-taker (a trader buyer has no Eskom account); and every joint term approved.

Once finalisable, Freeze terms also appears on every earlier step, so a deal can be concluded from anywhere in the wizard.

4.7 Settlement consequences — and terms outside the wizard

Sections §4.4 and §4.5 are the field-by-field screens. This section is what those families do to settlement (and the few commercial terms that never appear in the negotiation wizard).

Capacity & volume [mostly Joint] — contracted capacity, allocated energy, ToP min volume and capped volume limit bound the matched energy at settlement; for ToP they can create a payment even when consumption falls short (V8 §7). On a buyer- or seller-originated proposal draft, these (and other party / joint fields) can arrive with a suggested value and a short rationale from the matching advisor — you accept or override; nothing is binding until you send. > Where suggestions are taught. Buyer side — shape, cap price, seeded > Simulate defaults — > V3 §13.2.1. > Seller side — price card, floor, warranty, seeded Sales defaults — > V4 §6.4.1.

Tariff & pricing / escalation — at settlement the pricer applies the chosen structure per interval, TOU period and escalation year. Escalation compounds per calendar year; the strategy engine assumes the same curve when valuing the contract (V3).

Curtailment — settlement prices deemed energy at the contract rate and tags curtailment lines with the instruction that caused them (market side in V3 §17).

Spill, excess & banking — settlement’s adjuster writes spill credits and maintains the banking ledger drawdown (V8 §7).

Shortfall & delivery — settlement computes shortfall against the guaranteed profile net of excused windows and prices the chosen remedy (V8 §7).

Metering & settlement cadence — meter references come from the sites; Settlement Frequency chooses how often a settlement period closes (daily contracts settle every morning at 01:00, monthly on the 1st — V1 §2).

RECs & carbon — drive the statement’s certificate lines and the off-taker book’s green-coverage KPI (V3 §13).

Trader terms [captured at the proposal — not in the negotiation wizard] — a trader buyer’s margin (type, c/kWh or %, back-to-back pricing); a trader seller’s source guarantee, portfolio/replacement rights and licence warranty. Chain settlement and the trader P&L read these (V8 §10). Compose them in the trader studios (§3.4e / §3.4f).

Wheeling charges [Derived] — loss factors and UoS charges of V2 §8.3, resolved from the deal’s network path. Nobody negotiates them in the wizard; the billing-responsibility panel in the proposal studios (§3.4) shows who pays.

Virtual family at settlement — one formula: the CfD of V0 §5, applied per period at the chosen frequency (V8 §14). Settlement volume basis decides what that formula multiplies — and therefore who pays when generation and consumption do not line up. Settle on generated volume and the buyer pays strike for plant output that may earn no WER credit; settle on matched volume only and the seller carries that mismatch. There is no quiet default. Cash-flow intuition: §9.

How long a counterparty offer stands, and that private review notes stay private until you accept or share, remain under §3.2 and §3.5a.

Follow along. Seat: IPP 2 (ipp_2@webill.net) — the negotiation ladder. Path: Negotiations. You should see one Negotiating deal with OffTaker A (open it: ownership badges, and the wizard as the seller sees it), three Agreed deals showing Sign by dates and the Sign button, one Declined with its reason on the badge, and the Active book. For the virtual wizard, switch to Off-taker C — its one Negotiating deal is virtual.

Data. full_demo · seed 42 · stage S04 (lifecycle) · sealed 2026-07-15.

4.8 Price devices — upside sharing and the volume strike

Tariff & Pricing now includes folded Upside sharing and Volume strike panels in both wizards. Leave a device disabled to retain the existing settlement. Upside sharing captures the seller’s share of the positive difference between published hourly SMP and either a fixed threshold or the effective contract price plus a margin. An optional c/kWh cap limits each interval; an annual Rand cap limits the total. It is unavailable on a virtual contract that already uses a market floating leg.

A volume strike prices the first stated MWh normally, then changes the treatment of later energy in chronological order. Choose a month, quarter or contract year. Physical excess can use market price, a discounted contract price, no payment, or the spill terms. A virtual strike uses UNPAID above the limit: it caps CfD payments and leaves WER unchanged. A contract-year strike cannot exceed an existing annual CAPPED limit.

4.9 The availability guarantee

Physical Shortfall & Delivery and virtual Generator Obligations capture the guaranteed percentage, measurement period, method, deadband, damages rate and cap. The guarantee mirrors the existing performance warranty. Meter inferred compares each observed hour against the forecast threshold after contractual excuses. Observed zero production differs from a missing meter reading. Missing evidence refuses measurement; Telemetry refuses until plant telemetry is connected.

Declared outages use recorded SO outage windows. A force-majeure or maintenance excuse must be recorded on the instruction evidence and permitted by the contract; overlapping excuses count once. Damages are assessed when the monthly or contract-year measurement period closes. The seller pays only for shortfall beyond the deadband, subject to any period energy-charge cap.

4.10 Termination — events, notice, cure and payment

Physical step 12, Termination, and virtual step 8, Legal Terms, capture the events, notice and cure periods, force-majeure trigger, and estimated payment method. Existing step numbers stay intact. Convenience termination requires an earliest contract year. Payment choices are none, a fixed schedule per MW and remaining year, or a lost-margin estimate with pinned forecast assumptions. These are contractual estimates, not marked fair values.

Open Termination on the Contracts register to inspect a notice clock and its payment marked estimated. Serving a notice is a human action. The recipient can record a timely cure; the serving party can withdraw. When a served notice becomes effective, the daily contract job terminates the agreement and queues its final shortened settlement. It leaves future settlement eligibility; the final period includes the pinned payment with a balancing counterparty line. Lost-margin notices refuse when the required pinned forecast is absent.

For a lost-margin estimate, select an available price reference in the register. A market reference pins a complete, versioned month of DAM P50 prices; a retail reference pins an effective tariff for the buyer. Enter the reviewed remaining P50 energy, the weighted contract rate and the forecast source and assumptions. The selected monthly average or tariff band is held constant for the remaining term, and the form says so explicitly. Review estimate shows the amount and effective date without serving anything. Confirm reviewed estimate and serve notice saves the assumptions and price evidence. If the contract or reference changes between review and confirmation, review again. Missing reference data blocks serving; later price updates do not rewrite a served notice.

5. Agreement, signing and activation

5.1 Agreed — the terms freeze

In plain words. AGREED means both sides have finished bargaining and locked the commercial sheet. You are no longer editing prices and clauses — you are deciding whether to sign that locked sheet (or to unlock it again on purpose).

How a deal reaches AGREED

Either party chooses Freeze terms, reviews the saved sections, then presses Confirm freeze when the sheet is complete and all drafts are saved. The same rule applies to physical and virtual deals (§4.6):

1. Every required term for that deal is filled in.
2. No joint term is still waiting for the other side’s approval.

If either check fails, Freeze terms stays gated (the footer lists what is missing). The server enforces the same rules, so an incomplete deal cannot be forced into AGREED by another path.

When Confirm freeze succeeds, the platform:

• sets status to AGREED;
• stamps agreed_at (the moment the freeze started);
• opens the 10-day sign window.

On Negotiations the row turns green (Agreed) and shows “Sign by {date}” — ten calendar days from that stamp. That deadline is enforced: a nightly background job moves unsigned AGREED deals to SUSPENDED once the window has fully elapsed (any half-completed signature is voided). Suspended deals stay on Negotiations but cannot be signed or re-opened until both sides consent to revival (below).

What “frozen” means

While the deal is AGREED:

Think of AGREED as sealing an envelope: the letter inside is the deal you both just finished. Signing is writing your name on the envelope. Re-opening is tearing it open again so you can rewrite the letter.

Suspended — the sign window lapsed

If ten calendar days pass after agreed_at without both signatures, status becomes SUSPENDED. On Negotiations the row shows orange (Suspended) and the wizard is read-only. Signing and Re-open are closed.

To resume:

1. Either party clicks Request revival.
2. The counterparty clicks Accept revival.
3. Status returns to AGREED with a new agreed_at (fresh 10-day window). Terms stay frozen — this is not a re-open of the bargain.

The requester may Cancel request before the other side accepts. Either side can review the saved terms while suspended.

Re-open — unlocking on purpose

Either party may Re-open an AGREED deal. That is a deliberate step backward to NEGOTIATING. Choose Reopen terms… on the row. The confirmation names the agreement and recorded signatures. Keep agreement cancels without changing anything. Only Clear signatures and reopen performs the reset. It:

• voids any signature already recorded (the first signer must sign again after the next freeze);
• clears agreed_at (the sign window restarts the next time you reach AGREED);
• sends every joint term back to pending, proposed by the person who re-opened — so both sides must approve the shared fields again.

Use Re-open when someone spotted a real mistake or you both want to change a term. Do not use it casually after one side has already signed — you are throwing away that signature and reopening the bargain.

Example

Off-taker and IPP finish the physical wizard. All joint fields show approved; required terms are present. Either side reviews Freeze terms and presses Confirm freeze → status AGREED, Negotiations shows Sign by 15 Aug 2026. The energy price is now locked at 85 c/kWh. If the buyer then wants 82 c/kWh, they must Re-open, change the price (seller must approve again if it is joint or seller-owned as the ownership badges say), reach Freeze terms again, and both must sign the new freeze.

5.2 The signing ceremony

Sign opens the ceremony for the deal. What you see:

1. Contract Terms — a short summary. Choose Review full saved agreement to read all saved sections, including legal, network, renewable certificate and carbon terms. Closing review returns to signing. Changing terms requires deliberate reopening.
2. Signing Status — Buyer and Seller cards, each Signed (by whom, when) or Pending. If the terms changed after the first signature, a red banner explaining that both parties need to sign the current version.
3. Joint Terms Approval — informational: how many joint terms are approved vs pending. It doesn’t block signing, but review before you put your name down.
4. The signer form — blank fields for your own full name, work email and optional title. Name and a valid email are required before Sign is enabled. The method is Platform Consent: your agreement is cryptographically bound to the current terms via a content hash — a SHA-256 over the commercial term set, so what you signed is provable later.

After you have signed, your row says Awaiting [counterparty] signature and offers View agreement.

You sign only as your natural role. The first signature records and waits (“Signature recorded. Awaiting counterparty signature.”); the second signature triggers the gate: both signatures present, both hashes identical → the contract advances to SIGNED, both sidebars update, and the deal appears on the Contracts register.

5.3 When a contract is complete (SIGNED)

A deal is commercially complete the moment the signing gate advances it to SIGNED. That is not a soft label — it is the point at which the platform has:

1. Frozen terms — locked at AGREED; both parties signed the same content hash (SHA-256 of the commercial term set).
2. Two immutable signatures — BUYER and SELLER rows with name, title, email, method (PLATFORM_CONSENT), IP, user-agent, server signed_at, and a frozen content_snapshot.
3. A written agreement PDF — generated asynchronously from those snapshots (not from the live, editable PPA record), hashed as document_hash, and stored for download.

Written agreement PDF

On the second matching signature the platform enqueues GenerateAgreement. The worker:

• rebuilds the render context from the signed snapshot + party orgs
  • both signature rows;
• composes the PPA template library (priv/agreements/templates/ppa) for the deal type (OFFTAKER_IPP, OFFTAKER_TRADER, TRADER_IPP, TRADER_TRADER);
• renders Markdown → HTML → PDF and records an insert-only ExecutedAgreement (content_hash, document_hash, storage_uri, template version, signature ids).

Where the PDF is stored

Parties download via /org/agreements/:id (session org must be a party to the contract).

Example — the thread’s physical deal

In the demo, open Contracts → PPPA-202607-138209764 → View contract: signatories, pricing and the Settlements list are the same evidence the written PDF’s Execution page records.

5.4 Activation

Nothing to click: the daily activation trigger (V1 §6) flips SIGNED contracts to ACTIVE when their start date arrives — both statuses live on the Contracts register (commencement column shows start date and starts in… / N months active). From that moment the contract is a standing instruction to settlement, and the seller’s hierarchy, forecast and strategy screens (V4/V6) treat it as live supply or demand. The written PDF generated at SIGNED remains the immutable record of what was signed; activation does not regenerate it.

Follow along. Seat: IPP 2 (ipp_2@webill.net). Path: Negotiations → any Agreed row → Sign. You should see the ceremony with both status cards Pending and the blank signer form. (Signing is reversible only via Re-open before the counterparty signs — in a shared demo environment, look, don’t sign.) After both signatures, the deal leaves Negotiations for Contracts — open a SIGNED/ACTIVE demo row there and confirm an executed-agreement download once the generator has run.

Data. full_demo · seed 42 · stage S04 (lifecycle) · sealed 2026-07-15.

6. The contracts register

Contracts (/org/deals/contracts — the Deals tab you land on) is the executed book: every physical and virtual PPA this organisation is a party to that reached SIGNED, ACTIVE or TERMINATED. An AGREED agreement still waiting for signatures is a negotiation, not a contract — it is listed once, under Negotiations, and a footer note here says how many are waiting.

The number in brackets on the Contracts tab is the size of that book. It is the one Deals tab whose number is an inventory rather than work waiting on you — a contract is not a task — and it is the same number the sidebar shows. The table’s own pill counts what the current filters leave, so the two differ while a filter is on.

There are no stat cards. One context line states the book once — how many agreements, how many active / signed, physical / virtual, and the contracted MW — and the next settlement run with its live countdown, stated once for the book rather than repeated on every row (it is the settlement clock, V1 §2). Columns:

6.1 The contract page

Opening a contract leaves the Deals tab bar behind. /org/deals/contracts/:ppa_id is the contract’s own view: from there the tabs on screen are that contract’s, and ‹ Back to Contracts returns to the register. The sidebar still marks Deals, because that is where the contract lives.

The header — reference, status, instrument, both parties, term, capacity and the settlement cadence with the next run — stays put while only the panel beneath the tabs changes. Nothing in that header is repeated inside a tab:

Written agreement (when one has been generated) and Register forward (ACTIVE physical PPAs) are actions in the contract header. Registering a forward schedule opens under the same header, without claiming a tab — it is an action, not one of the contract’s standing views.

Two dispute lists, two questions. This tab is one agreement’s dispute history, so it drops the agreement column and dates each row instead. The room at Deals → Disputes is the cross-contract inbox — what needs me? — and its badge counts the disputes waiting on your move. Each names the other, so neither is mistaken for a copy.

Note — the written agreement. When a long-form document has been generated for this physical agreement, Written agreement in the header opens that PDF. The signatories and the term groups on Overview remain the terms settlement reads. The design of the long-form text lives in docs/references/templates/written_contract.md.

Follow along. Seat: Off-taker C (offtaker_c@webill.net). Path: Contracts. You should see the thread’s direct deal (PPPA-202607-138209764, IPP2 Atlantis Wind → OffTaker C Midrand DC, Active) among six active contracts — open Settlements on it and the settled periods of V5’s story are already there.

Data. full_demo · seed 42 · stages S04/S09 · sealed 2026-07-15.

7. Worked example — the thread’s physical deal

This chapter walks one physical (wheeled) deal from “I found someone” all the way to “we both signed.” Same cast as V2 §10. Plain words first; screen names in bold when you need them.

Data. full_demo · seed 42 · stage S04 (lifecycle) · sealed 2026-07-15 · M8 gate re-check 2026-07-18 · commit 925037a. Happy-path ACTIVE deal: PPPA-202607-138209764 · AS_GENERATED · 1.000 MW · start 2026-01-01 · 10 years · FIXED 85.0 c/kWh · DAILY settlement.

7.1 Who is in the story

Think of three kinds of “shop front” that can start a deal:

A physical deal means energy is wheeled on the grid from the seller’s connection to the buyer’s — not a private cable. Both sides must be on networks that allow that path (for the direct line above, both sites are municipal).

7.2 Three doors into a proposal

Anyone can start — the door depends on your shop front:

Note. Simulation first is the normal path: you see fit and margin before you put a number on the table. The studio then turns that evidence into a sendable proposal.

7.3 Walk A — Off-taker Site proposes (buyer starts)

Seat: OffTaker C · Shop front: Midrand DC · Counterparty: IPP2 Atlantis Wind.

Numbers we will use