Liquidity risks on power exchanges

Financial derivatives are important hedging tool for asset’s manager. Electricity is by its very nature the most volatile commodity, which creates big incentive to share the risk among the market participants through financial contracts. But, even if volume of derivatives contracts traded on Power Exchanges has been growing since the beginning of the restructuring of the sector, electricity markets continue to be considerably less liquid than other commodities. This paper tries to quantify the effect of this insufficient liquidity on power exchange, by introducing a pricing equilibrium model for power derivatives where agents can not hedge up to their desired level. Mathematically, the problem is a two stage stochastic Generalized Nash Equilibrium and its solution is not unique. Computing a large panel of solutions, we show how the risk premium and player’s profit are affected by the illiquidity.illiquidity, electricity, power exchange, artitrage, generalized Nash Equilibrium, equilibrium based model, coherent risk valuation

Do Firms Sell Forward for Strategic Reasons? An Application to the Wholesale Market for Natural Gas

Building on a model of the interaction of risk-averse firms that compete in forward and spot markets, we develop an empirical strategy to test whether oligopolistic firms use forward contracts for strategic motives, for risk-hedging, or for both. An increase in the number of players weakens the incentives to sell forward for risk-hedging reasons. However, if strategic motives are also relevant, then an increase in the number of players strengthens the incentives to sell forward. This difference provides the analyst with a way to identify whether strategic considerations are important at motivating firms to sell forward. Using data from the Dutch wholesale market for natural gas where we observe the number of players, spot and forward sales, and churn rates, we find evidence that strategic reasons play an important role at explaining the observed firms’ (inverse) hedge ratios. In addition, the data lend support to the existence of a learning effect by wholesalers.market power, risk-hedging, forward contracts, spot market, over-the-counter trade, market transparency, churn rates

Accounting for Uncertainty Affecting Technical Change in an Economic-Climate Model

The key role of technological change in the decline of energy and carbon intensities of aggregate economic activities is widely recognized. This has focused attention on the issue of developing endogenous models for the evolution of technological change. With a few exceptions this is done using a deterministic framework, even though technological change is a dynamic process which is uncertain by nature. Indeed, the two main vectors through which technological change may be conceptualized, learning through R&D investments and learning-by-doing, both evolve and cumulate in a stochastic manner. How misleading are climate strategies designed without accounting for such uncertainty? The main idea underlying the present piece of research is to assess and discuss the effect of endogenizing this uncertainty on optimal R&D investment trajectories and carbon emission abatement strategies. In order to do so, we use an implicit stochastic programming version of the FEEM-RICE model, first described in Bosetti, Carraro and Galeotti, (2005). The comparative advantage of taking a stochastic programming approach is estimated using as benchmarks the expected-value approach and the worst-case scenario approach. It appears that, accounting for uncertainty and irreversibility would affect both the optimal level of investment in R&D –which should be higher– and emission reductions –which should be contained in the early periods. Indeed, waiting and investing in R&D appears to be the most cost-effective hedging strategy.Stochastic Programming, Uncertainty and Learning, Endogenous Technical Change

Risk trading in capacity equilibrium models

We present a set of power investment models, the class of risky capacity equilibrium problems, reflecting different assumptions of perfect and imperfect markets. The models are structured in a unified stochastic Nash game framework. Each model is the concatenation of a model of the short-term market operations (perfect competition or Cournot), with a long-term model of investment behavior (risk neutral and risk averse behavior under different assumptions of risk trading). The models can all be formulated as complementarity problems, some of them having an optimization equivalent. We prove existence of solutions and report numerical results to illustrate the relevance of market imperfections on welfare and investment behavior. The models are constructed and discussed as two stage problems but we show that the extension to multistage is achieved by a change of notation and a standard assumption on multistage risk functions. We also treat a large multistage industrial model to illustrate the computational feasibility of the approach

Study Of Stochastic Market Clearing Problems In Power Systems With High Renewable Integration

Integrating large-scale renewable energy resources into the power grid poses several operational and economic problems due to their inherently stochastic nature. The lack of predictability of renewable outputs deteriorates the power grid’s reliability. The power system operators have recognized this need to account for uncertainty in making operational decisions and forming electricity pricing. In this regard, this dissertation studies three aspects that aid large-scale renewable integration into power systems. 1. We develop a nonparametric change point-based statistical model to generate scenarios that accurately capture the renewable generation stochastic processes; 2. We design new pricing mechanisms derived from alternative stochastic programming formulations of the electricity market clearing problem under uncertainty; 3. We devise a novel approach to coordinate strategic operations of multiple noncooperative system operators. The current industry practices are based on deterministic models that do not account for the stochasticity of renewable energy. Therefore, the solutions obtained from these deterministic models will not provide accurate measurements. Stochastic programming (SP) can accommodate the stochasticity of renewable energy by considering a set of possible scenarios. However, the reliability of the SP model solution depends on the accuracy of the scenarios. We develop a nonparametric statistical simulation method to develop scenarios for wind generation using wind speed data. In this method, we address the nonstationarity issues that come with wind-speed time-series data using a nonparametric change point detection method. Using this approach, we retain the covariance structure of the original wind-speed time series in all the simulated series. With an accurate set of scenarios, we develop alternative two-stage SP models for the two-settlement electricity market clearing problem using different representations of the non-anticipativity constraints. Different forms of non-anticipativity constraints reveal different hidden dual information inside the canonical two-stage SP model, which we use to develop new pricing mechanisms. The new pricing mechanisms preserve properties of previously proposed pricing mechanisms, such as revenue adequacy in expectation and cost recovery in expectation. More importantly, our pricing mechanisms can guarantee cost recovery for every scenario. Furthermore, we develop bounds for the price distortion under every scenario instead of the expected distortion bounds. We demonstrate the differences in prices obtained from the alternative mechanisms through numerical experiments. Finally, we discuss the importance of distributed smart grid operations inside the power grid. We develop an information and electricity exchange system among multiple distribution systems. These distribution systems participate/compete in common markets cohere electricity is exchanged. We develop a standard Nash game treating each distribution system (DS) as an individual player who optimizes their strategies separately. We develop proximal best response (BR) schemes to solve this problem. We present results from numerical experiments conducted on three and six DS settings