Impact of the electricity contracts on the generators’ strategic behavior

Abstract

Electricity physical and financial contracts are common instruments used by generators to reallocate their risk among other market participants. Likewise, from the regulator point of view, contracts are understood and promoted as a way to mitigate the generators market power exercise. Therefore the analysis of the impact of these derivatives on the electricity market prices and on the agents’ strategic behavior is of interest for both regulator and market participants. This paper focuses on how physical and financial electricity contracts affect the generators’ strategies, but does not deal with determining contracts’ quantities or prices, that are assumed to be fixed and known. Strategies are computed for selected agents and different physical or financial contracted quantities, assuming inelastic demand. A CSFE methodology for endogenous conjectures computation, developed by the authors in previous works, has been applied. The examples highlight the importance of computing the conjectures when the contracted quantities vary, since the variable agents’ position can significantly change the market results. The main conclusion is that the common understanding that contracts can decrease the market prices may be called into question.