Strategic evaluation of bilateral contract for electricity retailer in restructured power market

In a competitive market scenario, consumers make payments for the consumption of electricity to retailers at fixed tariff. The retailers buy power at the Market Clearing Price (MCP) in spot market and/or through bilateral contract at agreed upon price. Due to these different modes at buying and selling ends, the retailers are faced with an involved task of estimating their payoffs along with the risk-quantification. The methodology presented in this paper gives a range of bilateral quantity and associated price for a retailer to ensure risk-constrained payoff. The exercise is carried out with a single retailer in the market as well as for a case of competition amongst two retailers. Risk is quantified using Risk Adjusted Recovery on Capital (RAROC). The problem is evaluated to get a range of bilateral quantity to be quoted for a particular bilateral price at fixed tariff of loyal load and fixed value of switching load. This summary combined with risk-averseness of the retailer leads him to make a judicial choice about bilateral transactions such that it leads to a risk-constrained payoff. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.