Risk-Return Incentives in Liberalised Electricity Markets

We employ Monte Carlo analysis to determine the distribution of returns for various electricity generation technologies. Costs and revenues for each technology are arrived by means of a sophisticated unit commitment and economic dispatch algorithm. The results show that small amounts of coal investment along with high investment in advanced CCGT can reduce the risk of baseload-only portfolios, while flexible generation technologies appear on the efficient frontier when all technology types are considered. Diversification incentives regarding operational considerations dominate over incentives to diversify between fuel types