SolarTech, a non-profit private/public consortium, recently announced the solar industry’s first engineering procurement and construction (EPC) contract template for solar financing. Whereas a PPA (power purchase agreement), loan agreement or operating lease agreement handle the front-end financing relationship, the EPC agreement handles the execution phase of the project. The template was developed by the SolarTech Finance committee, with the support of my colleague Howard Susman, and is projected to reduce contract negotiations by 50 to 75 percent.

In SolarTech’s announcement, Howard said that “our guiding principles in developing this form were, first, to achieve sufficient balance in the allocation of risks that both contractor and owner would feel comfortable with the terms, and second, to include provisions typically acceptable to the financial community, without whose acceptance, there would be no projects at all.”

You can download a copy of the EPC contract template here (free for SolarTech members; $395 for non-members).