IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ris/fcnwpa/2015_011.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Real Options Analysis of the Flexible Operation of an Enhanced Gas-Fired Power Plant

Author

Listed:
  • Glensk, Barbara

    (E.ON Energy Research Center, Future Energy Consumer Needs and Behavior (FCN))

  • Madlener, Reinhard

    (E.ON Energy Research Center, Future Energy Consumer Needs and Behavior (FCN))

Abstract

The promotion of electricity from renewable energies in Germany causes difficulties in the profitable operation of many modern conventional power plants. Nevertheless, fluctuating availability of power from renewable energy sources requires flexible conventional plants, i.e. power plants which are able to react fast to these fluctuations and whose start-up and shut-down optimization will help to reduce their running costs. In this paper, we describe various possibilities of enhancing the flexibility of conventional combined cycle gas-fired turbine (CCGT) power plants, which can be achieved by investing in additional technical components or by the upgrading of existing components. The irreversible character of these investments justifies the use of a real options approach. To this end, we present a real options model for the flexible operation of existing gas-fired power plants, taking into account both technical and economic aspects. The proposed model adopts and extends the approach of Deng and Oren (Prob Eng Info Sci, 2003, pp.155-181) to the gas-fired power plant regarding its different operation stages. Moreover, both the electricity price and the spark spread are used as a profitability indicator and source of uncertainty. The simplified definition of the power plant's operation strategy complements the presented model. In a case study, we consider several technical options to improve the minimum load and part-load efficiency by retrofitting a gas-fired power plant. The proposed procedure can help to assess the future role of conventional power plants and supports the decision-making process regarding both reinvestments and optimal operation of power plants. The introduced model can also be easily adapted to other power generation technologies, not only gas-fired power plants.

Suggested Citation

  • Glensk, Barbara & Madlener, Reinhard, 2015. "Real Options Analysis of the Flexible Operation of an Enhanced Gas-Fired Power Plant," FCN Working Papers 11/2015, E.ON Energy Research Center, Future Energy Consumer Needs and Behavior (FCN).
    • Handle: RePEc:ris:fcnwpa:2015_011
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.fcn.eonerc.rwth-aachen.de/global/show_document.asp?id=aaaaaaaaabdbyyz
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Fernandes, Bartolomeu & Cunha, Jorge & Ferreira, Paula, 2011. "The use of real options approach in energy sector investments," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 15(9), pages 4491-4497.
    2. Traber, Thure & Kemfert, Claudia, 2011. "Gone with the wind? -- Electricity market prices and incentives to invest in thermal power plants under increasing wind energy supply," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(2), pages 249-256, March.
    3. Erkka Näsäkkälä & Stein‐Erik Fleten, 2005. "Flexibility and technology choice in gas fired power plant investments," Review of Financial Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 14(3-4), pages 371-393.
    4. Avinash K. Dixit & Robert S. Pindyck, 1994. "Investment under Uncertainty," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 5474.
    5. Fleten, Stein-Erik & Näsäkkälä, Erkka, 2010. "Gas-fired power plants: Investment timing, operating flexibility and CO2 capture," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(4), pages 805-816, July.
    6. Barbara Glensk & Christiane Rosen & Reinhard Madlener, 2016. "A Real Options Model for the Disinvestment in Conventional Power Plants," Operations Research Proceedings, in: Marco Lübbecke & Arie Koster & Peter Letmathe & Reinhard Madlener & Britta Peis & Grit Walther (ed.), Operations Research Proceedings 2014, edition 1, pages 173-179, Springer.
    7. Alexander, David Richard & Mo, Mengjia & Stent, Alan Fraser, 2012. "Arithmetic Brownian motion and real options," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 219(1), pages 114-122.
    8. Rosen, Christiane & Madlener, Reinhard, 2015. "An Option-Based Approach for the Fair Pricing of Flexible Electricity Supply," FCN Working Papers 10/2015, E.ON Energy Research Center, Future Energy Consumer Needs and Behavior (FCN).
    9. Sensfuß, Frank & Ragwitz, Mario & Genoese, Massimo, 2008. "The merit-order effect: A detailed analysis of the price effect of renewable electricity generation on spot market prices in Germany," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 36(8), pages 3076-3084, August.
    10. Peter Zweifel & Aaron Praktiknjo & Georg Erdmann, 2017. "Energy Economics," Springer Texts in Business and Economics, Springer, number 978-3-662-53022-1, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Glensk, Barbara & Madlener, Reinhard, 2017. "Evaluating the Enhanced Flexibility of Lignite-Fired Power Plants: A Real Options Analysis," FCN Working Papers 107/2016, E.ON Energy Research Center, Future Energy Consumer Needs and Behavior (FCN).
    2. Barbara Glensk & Christiane Rosen & Reinhard Madlener, 2016. "A Real Options Model for the Disinvestment in Conventional Power Plants," Operations Research Proceedings, in: Marco Lübbecke & Arie Koster & Peter Letmathe & Reinhard Madlener & Britta Peis & Grit Walther (ed.), Operations Research Proceedings 2014, edition 1, pages 173-179, Springer.
    3. Dominik Kryzia & Michał Kopacz & Katarzyna Kryzia, 2020. "The Valuation of the Operational Flexibility of the Energy Investment Project Based on a Gas-Fired Power Plant," Energies, MDPI, vol. 13(7), pages 1-16, March.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Glensk, Barbara & Madlener, Reinhard, 2019. "The value of enhanced flexibility of gas-fired power plants: A real options analysis," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 251(C), pages 1-1.
    2. Barbara Glensk & Christiane Rosen & Reinhard Madlener, 2016. "A Real Options Model for the Disinvestment in Conventional Power Plants," Operations Research Proceedings, in: Marco Lübbecke & Arie Koster & Peter Letmathe & Reinhard Madlener & Britta Peis & Grit Walther (ed.), Operations Research Proceedings 2014, edition 1, pages 173-179, Springer.
    3. Glensk, Barbara & Madlener, Reinhard, 2017. "Evaluating the Enhanced Flexibility of Lignite-Fired Power Plants: A Real Options Analysis," FCN Working Papers 107/2016, E.ON Energy Research Center, Future Energy Consumer Needs and Behavior (FCN).
    4. Schachter, J.A. & Mancarella, P., 2016. "A critical review of Real Options thinking for valuing investment flexibility in Smart Grids and low carbon energy systems," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 261-271.
    5. Ketterer, Janina C., 2014. "The impact of wind power generation on the electricity price in Germany," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 270-280.
    6. Simshauser, Paul, 2020. "Merchant renewables and the valuation of peaking plant in energy-only markets," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(C).
    7. Barbara Glensk & Reinhard Madlener, 2019. "Energiewende @ Risk: On the Continuation of Renewable Power Generation at the End of Public Policy Support," Energies, MDPI, vol. 12(19), pages 1-25, September.
    8. Joachim Gahungu and Yves Smeers, 2012. "A Real Options Model for Electricity Capacity Expansion," RSCAS Working Papers 2012/08, European University Institute.
    9. GAHUNGU, Joachim & SMEERS, Yves, 2011. "A real options model for electricity capacity expansion," LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE 2011044, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    10. Chen, Siyuan & Zhang, Qi & Wang, Ge & Zhu, Lijing & Li, Yan, 2018. "Investment strategy for underground gas storage facilities based on real option model considering gas market reform in China," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 132-142.
    11. Westner, Günther & Madlener, Reinhard, 2012. "Investment in new power generation under uncertainty: Benefits of CHP vs. condensing plants in a copula-based analysis," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 34(1), pages 31-44.
    12. Pringles, Rolando & Olsina, Fernando & Penizzotto, Franco, 2020. "Valuation of defer and relocation options in photovoltaic generation investments by a stochastic simulation-based method," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 151(C), pages 846-864.
    13. Luis M. Abadie, 2009. "Valuation of Long-Term Investments in Energy Assets under Uncertainty," Energies, MDPI, vol. 2(3), pages 1-31, September.
    14. Mo, Jian-Lei & Schleich, Joachim & Zhu, Lei & Fan, Ying, 2015. "Delaying the introduction of emissions trading systems—Implications for power plant investment and operation from a multi-stage decision model," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(PB), pages 255-264.
    15. Santos, Lúcia & Soares, Isabel & Mendes, Carla & Ferreira, Paula, 2014. "Real Options versus Traditional Methods to assess Renewable Energy Projects," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 588-594.
    16. Seiji Harikae & James S. Dyer & Tianyang Wang, 2021. "Valuing Real Options in the Volatile Real World," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 30(1), pages 171-189, January.
    17. Würzburg, Klaas & Labandeira, Xavier & Linares, Pedro, 2013. "Renewable generation and electricity prices: Taking stock and new evidence for Germany and Austria," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 40(S1), pages 159-171.
    18. William Paul Bell & John Foster, 2017. "Using solar PV feed-in tariff policy history to inform a sustainable flexible pricing regime to enhance the diffusion of energy storage and electric vehicles," Journal of Bioeconomics, Springer, vol. 19(1), pages 127-145, April.
    19. Sina Atari & Yassine Bakkar & Eunice Omolola Olaniyi & Gunnar Prause, 2019. "Real options analysis of abatement investments for sulphur emission control compliance," Entrepreneurship and Sustainability Issues, VsI Entrepreneurship and Sustainability Center, vol. 6(3), pages 1062-1087, March.
    20. Narita, Daiju & Klepper, Gernot, 2015. "Economic incentives for carbon dioxide storage under uncertainty: A real options analysis," Kiel Working Papers 2002, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Real Options; Renewables; Gas-fired Power Plants; Flexibility; Energy Market;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C44 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods: Special Topics - - - Operations Research; Statistical Decision Theory
    • C63 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Mathematical Methods; Programming Models; Mathematical and Simulation Modeling - - - Computational Techniques
    • D24 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Production; Cost; Capital; Capital, Total Factor, and Multifactor Productivity; Capacity
    • D89 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Other
    • L94 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Transportation and Utilities - - - Electric Utilities
    • Q40 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Energy - - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ris:fcnwpa:2015_011. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Hendrik Schmitz (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/fceonde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.