Cross hedging and forward-contract pricing of electricity

We consider the problem of an electric-power marketer offering a fixed-price forward contract to provide electricity that it purchases from a potentially volatile and unpredictable fledgling spot energy market. One option for the risk-averse marketer who wants to hedge against the spot-price volatility is to engage in cross hedging to reduce the contract's profit variance, and to determine the forward-contract price as a risk-adjusted price - the sum of a baseline price and a risk premium. We show how the marketer can estimate the spot-price relationship between two wholesale energy markets for the purpose of cross hedging, as well as the optimal hedge and the forward contract's baseline price and risk premium. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.