A pricing measure to explain the risk premium in power markets

Abstract

In electricity markets, it is sensible to use a two-factor model with mean reversion for spot prices. One of the factors is an Ornstein–Uhlenbeck (OU) process driven by a Brownian motion and accounts for the small variations. The other factor is an OU process driven by a pure jump L´evy process and models the characteristic spikes observed in such markets. When it comes to pricing, a popular choice of pricing measure is given by the Esscher transform that preserves the probabilistic structure of the driving L´evy processes while changing the levels of mean reversion. Using this choice one can generate stochastic risk premiums (in geometric spot models) but with (deterministically) changing sign. In this paper we introduce a pricing change of measure, which is an extension of the Esscher transform. With this new change of measure we can also slow down the speed of mean reversion and generate stochastic risk premiums with stochastic nonconstant sign, even in arithmetic spot models. In particular, we can generate risk profiles with positive values in the short end of the forward curve and negative values in the long end. Finally, our pricing measure allows us to have a stationary spot dynamics while still having randomly fluctuating forward prices for contracts far from maturity.

© 2014 Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics