The natural hedge of a gas-fired power plant

Electricity industries worldwide have been restructured in order to introduce competition.As a result, decisionmakers are exposed to volatile electricity prices, which are positively correlated with those of natural gas in markets with price-setting gas-fired power plants. Consequently, gas-fired plants are said to enjoy a “natural hedge.” We explore the properties of such a built-in hedge for a gas-fired power plant via a stochastic programming approach, which enables characterisation of uncertainty in both electricity and gas prices in deriving optimal hedging and generation decisions. The producer engages in financial hedging by signing forward contracts at the beginning of the month while anticipating uncertainty in spot prices. Using UK energy price data from 2006 to 2011 and daily aggregated dispatch decisions of a typical gasfired power plant, we find that such a producer does, in fact, enjoy a natural hedge, i.e., it is better off facing uncertain spot prices rather than locking in its generation cost. However, the natural hedge is not a perfect hedge, i.e., even modest risk aversion makes it optimal to use gas forwards partially. Furthermore, greater operational flexibility enhances this natural hedge as generation decisions provide a countervailing response to uncertainty. Conversely, higher energy-conversion efficiency reduces the X. Guo · A. Beskos · A. Siddiqui (B) Department of Statistical Science, University College London, London, UK e-mail: [email protected] X. Guo e-mail: [email protected] A. Beskos e-mail: [email protected] A. Siddiqui Department of Computer and Systems Sciences, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden