Aspirant actress finds new renewables role

PPAYA is the brainchild of Kristina Rabecaite, who came to the UK from Lithuania at the age of 15 in pursuit of an acting career. After getting knocked back at an audition because of her hair colour, she turned instead to economics and statistics in a change of course that led her into the field of power purchase agreements (PPAs).

Ms Rabecaite arrived in the UK in 2008 having convinced her mother to let her travel on her own in a bid for acting fame. She found a place to live in Suffolk, enrolled in school and got a job while also trying to build upon her stage and professional ballroom dancing experience in Lithuania.

“It was really not planned – nothing was organised,” she said. “I worked in a pub washing dishes just to get by and have some pocket money.

“I did that for about six to nine months, and I was only 15, so it did get a little bit hard. I kept lying to school about why my parents weren’t coming to parents’ evenings, and then I just ran out of excuses and they found out that I actually lived on my own.”

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One of her teachers found Ms Rabecaite a place to stay with family, allowing her to finish her GCSEs and later her A Levels. It was after a casting call in London for extras in a production of Les Misérables that Ms Rabecaite decided to abandon her acting ambitions.

“I spent my last 20 pounds getting to London and stood in the queue for about two hours,” she said. “It was so cold and there were hundreds of people there and finally one of the crew came to me and said take your hat off.

“I took my hat off and she said no…the director said no highlights. I’ve got natural highlights, I didn’t even dye my hair. I just couldn’t believe how quickly the decision was made that I’m not going to make it.

“I then thought after everything I’ve gone through, I’m never ever going to let anyone decide whether I’m going to be successful or not based on my hair, and I dropped the whole idea of acting.”

She went on to study economics and statistics at the University of Westminster, and from there immediately joined Limejump, a London start-up specialising in technology to manage large renewable energy networks. It was during that time that she met the future investors in PPAYA, which she set up at the start of this year following the 2019 acquisition of Limejump by Shell.

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“I had contracted and executed hundreds of power purchase agreements for [Limejump], and I guess I just saw a gap in the market from all the little processes that could have been done better to save generators money,” she said.

"One of [the future investors] pulled me aside after a meeting at Limejump and said if I ever had an idea or would like to get a deal together, they'd be very keen to sponsor me. At the time I was 24 so I thought 'Who me? No way', but after a a few more years I thought why not try?"

Her investors, who are also directors in the company, include Glen Capital owner Chris Rogers, Muirhall Energy managing director Chris Walker and Roy Foster, director at CR Foster Hydro. Together they have provided £800,000 in support of PPAYA’s launch at the end of July.

The platform is a price comparison website for farmers and other landowners with small-scale wind, hydro or solar generation capacity. PPAYA automatically finds the best PPA prices available, removing the time-consuming burden of this task.

Although Ms Rabecaite remains based in London, PPAYA’s registered headquarters are on the outskirts of Edinburgh, a reflection of the importance of the Scottish renewables market. The platform has signed up 70 power purchase agreement customers with a total of 150MW of generation, the majority of which is wind power.

“That was a lot more than we expected straight after launch, so I think everyone is very pleased,” she said. “The market was very welcoming.”