Avaliação de projeto eólico no estado de Ohio: uma abordagem pela teoria das opções reais

Abstract

In this study we analyze the case of a wind energy generator’s project, which is a wholesale market participant in the Ohio electricity market in two scenarios: 1) renting the land of the turbines installation (usual practice), and 2) buying the land in order to commercialize the corn grain productionshortening the revenue risk by diversification mechanism. Both scenarios havea flexibility to wait the right moment to invest, in which it will happen when the present value of the cash flow is greater than the initial cost of installation. Two horizons of production, 20-years and 30-years, will be considerate in this study. The financial viability was based on Real Options Theory, which allows the consideration of managerial flexibility in the project value. An important innovation of the study consists in the incorporation of a seasonal factor of the spikes of Ohio electricity prices, adapting the stochastic process of generation prices to market reality. Also, the study analyzed a new possibility to the wind energy generator’s projects, in which the investor would buy the land of turbines installation in order to operate at the corn grain market. The electricity prices at the Ohio wholesale market, LMP, and the price of corn grain received by the farmers are the uncertainties considered in this study.The stochastic process to simulate LMP was the mean-reverting jump diffusion model of Clewlow, Strickland and Kaminski (2000), with seasonal changes, and the corn price uncertainty, was based on Schwartz 1 Mean Reversion Model. The results indicate that the wind energy generator’s project at the first scenario and at both production horizons, 20-years and 30-years, does not present financial viability, in which the flexibility of waiting the right moment to invest still on. It could be explained by the lower price levels of the electricity wholesale market, and the inefficient generation profile of the project region. In addition, the PTC elimination could affect the result. The second scenario provided a slightly different result. On the second scenario, there was only one moment at the price simulation, in which there were price levels capable of generating a financially viable project in both operating horizons. Yet, even the second scenario decision rule presented a scenario with a positive value, the wait option to carry out the investment itself is the best choice of the investor, because the likelihood of such price levels are negligible. The comparison between the two scenarios demonstrated that the incorporation of land by investor generated a positive value to the project, in which those results are greater than the first scenario at both production horizons, 20-years and 30-years, and at all price simulations. Therefore, the present study demonstrated that the wind energy generator’s project in Northern Ohio operating at the wholesale electricity market is cost-prohibitive, even with the increasing of diversification.This result indicates that the wind energy generators are not prepared to just operate at the wholesale electricity market in Northern Ohio, indicating the sector needs new efforts to make this a real possibility, despite the US government has been working to increase the share of renewable energy sources in the US (the main program adopted by the State of Ohio, renewable Portfolio Standards - RPS, aims to increase renewable partition by 12.5% by the year 2024).