Every commercial solar project this platform funds is backed by a signed Power Purchase Agreement before a single panel is bought. A business — a factory, a farm, a municipality — commits to buying the electricity the installation produces, at a fixed price, for the length of the term.
That is what turns sunlight into a cashflow you can model. Without a PPA you are speculating on an electricity price and an offtaker at the same time. With one, the price is settled and only the offtaker is open.
Which is the part worth understanding. A PPA is a commercial contract between a solar operator and a buyer. If the buyer stops paying, the contract gives the project a claim, not an income. A business in distress is a business in distress whatever it signed, and a plant that cannot sell its electricity holds an asset rather than a revenue stream.
This is why the credit quality of the offtaker does more work than the size of the installation, and why a seven-year term is a seven-year view on a specific company as much as on the sun.
Target returns are not guaranteed and your capital is at risk.