power purchase agreement (PPA) is a long-term contract in which a buyer commits to purchase a power plant's electricity at agreed prices over a fixed term — often signed years before the plant exists, which makes it the instrument by which fusion power is first sold.
A PPA is distinct from selling into the wholesale spot market: the spot market pays whatever each hour clears at, while a PPA locks price and volume for a decade or more. That certainty is what makes new plants financeable — lenders and investors underwrite construction against contracted revenue rather than a forecast — so for capital-intensive technologies the PPA is less a sales document than a financing one. In recent years the corporate PPA has become a force of its own, as technology companies with fast-growing data-center loads contract directly for clean, firm power, sometimes from plants still years away from operation.
For 📝fusion, a signed PPA converts projected economics into a market test: the contract price is a buyer's judgment of what the plant's electricity — and implicitly its 📝levelized cost of energy (LCOE) — will be worth. First-of-a-kind fusion plants are expected to reach the grid through exactly this instrument.