A bespoke PPA is negotiated from scratch for each project. The developer approaches funders with a specific site, specific terms, and specific risk profile, and runs a competitive process to find the best capital. Each side's lawyers draft and negotiate the contract.
A framework PPA is built on pre-agreed templates between the developer and one or more institutional funders. The commercial terms (rates, indexation, take-or-pay levels, buyout formulae, novation clauses), the documentation, the credit criteria, and the due diligence standards have all been agreed in advance, before any specific project even exists.
The trade-off is speed and certainty vs maximum negotiating leverage. Framework deals close in weeks; bespoke deals take months. Framework rates are pre-agreed bands rather than the absolute lowest a funder might offer in a competitive auction. But for most commercial sites, the time-to-energisation gap and the certainty of close more than compensates for the small pricing tightening you'd get from running a fresh tender for every project.
Framework PPAs are particularly valuable for: - Multi-site portfolios where you want consistent terms across all sites - Time-sensitive projects where missing a deadline kills the economics - Sites that don't quite hit the size threshold for a bespoke competitive process - Installers who want to offer their customers a turnkey financed solution without taking the funding leg-work themselves
Where bespoke makes more sense: very large single projects (10 MW+), unusual technologies or structures, off-takers with very specific requirements, or when there's a strategic capital partner already engaged.