Electricity is not storable. As a consequence, electricity demand and supply need to be in balance at any moment in time as a shortage in production volume cannot be compensated with supply from inventories. However, if the installed power supply capacity is very flexible, variation in demand...

We analyze the risk premium on electricity forward contracts traded for the Nordic and German/Austrian electricity markets. We argue that finding risk premiums by analyzing overnight returns is more relevant than the frequently used ex post approach. The derivatives in these markets can be...

We model the impact of supply and demand on risk premiums in electricity futures, using daily data for 2003-2014. The model provides a satisfactory fit and allows for unspanned economic risk not embedded in the futures price. The spot risk premium and forward bias implied by the model are on...

We investigate the impacts of the carbon tax (effective July 2012 to July 2014) on wholesale electricity prices in the Australian National Electricity Market (NEM). Analyzing spot and futures contracts in four major regional markets, we first compute ex-ante forward risk premiums in the pre-tax...

The liberalisation of energy markets entails the appearance of market risks which must be borne by market participants: producers, retailers, and final consumers. Some of these risks can be managed by participating in the forward markets and transferring it to other agents who are willing to...

Natural gas has replaced coal as the dominant fuel for U.S. electricity generation. However, U.S. states that regulate electric utilities have retired coal more slowly than others. We build a structural model of rate-of-return regulation during an energy transition where utilities face tradeoffs...

Currently, most U.S. electricity consumers pay a constant price per kWh consumed that accounts for most of their bill. Ongoing developments in the power system increase efficiency gains that can be made from exposing consumers to widely varying wholesale spot prices. Pure spot pricing is not...

Die Energiekrise zwingt Deutschland und die EU-Staaten energiepolitische Entscheidungen neu zu bewerten und gegebenenfalls anzupassen. Zunächst rückt die Notwendigkeit, die erneuerbaren Energien schnell und ambitioniert auszubauen noch stärker in den Fokus. Zudem gibt es einerseits...

We study how consumer search affects pricing in markets with incumbents and entrants using panel data on German electricity retail markets. Consumers observe the baseline price of the incumbent and decide whether or not to search. Incumbent providers can price discriminate between searching and...