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CFADS is not cash to equity. Between the two sits the waterfall the lender writes into the facility agreement, and the model has to run it in that order every period.
Riverbend, year 1:
Two reserves sit inside it.
The DSRA holds six months of the next debt service. Funded in cash at COD (R36.3m) as a project cost, it follows the repayment schedule to a peak of R41.6m and is released when the loan is repaid.
The maintenance reserve pays for the year-12 inverter overhaul: R31.1m in that year's rand. It is built R10.4m a year over the three years before, inside the 6 to 36 months of upcoming spend lenders typically set, and CFADS is struck after those contributions, as lenders define it. So the reserve pays the overhaul and neither CFADS nor debt service dips in year 12; the cost reaches debt service through the funding years instead.
Why not build it from year 1? Cash reserved a decade early sits idle while the equity waits for it, and the lender gains nothing it doesn't already have from a reserve full on the day it is needed.
The lock-up never bites in the base case: minimum DSCR 1.57x against 1.15x. Post 8 shows the one stress where it does.
Next: section 12B and the assessed loss.
Riverbend Solar is an illustrative case study: a fictional deal with no real counterparty.