Beyond the Fixed Price: Valuation and Risk of Non-Standard Renewable PPAs

Renewable Power Purchase Agreements have become increasingly important instruments for supporting the energy transition, as they offer revenue stability to renewable energy producers and price certainty to electricity consumers. This paper develops a financial framework for the valuation and risk assessment of fixed-price renewable PPAs. We formalize the payoff structures of the main PPA designs adopted in practice for wind and photovoltaic generation and derive fair contract prices based on financial valuation principles. We further propose a market risk-assessment methodology based on Monte Carlo simulation and introduce a parsimonious continuous-time model for solar irradiance suitable for financial applications. An empirical analysis of the Italian electricity market shows that fair prices and risk profiles vary substantially across technologies and contractual structures, highlighting the trade-off between downside protection and participation in favorable market outcomes. This framework provides practical tools for the pricing and risk evaluation of renewable PPAs.