Valuation methods for capital investment in merchant power plants

Wholesale electricity in the U.S. and many other countries is increasingly being supplied by unregulated firms competing to sell their product in competitive markets. Developers of the new merchant plants face a different set of risks than the regulated vertically integrated utilities that formerly owned the generating resources that supplied electricity to customers in their service area. This thesis evaluates the impact that industry restructuring will have on investments in capital-intensive electricity generation technologies and assesses the applicability of traditional economic valuation methods to investment decisions in a competitive wholesale electricity market. The evidence is presented through the use of a case study on the Likelihood of investment in new nuclear power plants in both organizational arrangements as predicted by two economic valuation methods. The results suggest that merchant developers will favor less capital-intensive technologies and that the traditional valuation method for power plant investment fails to capture the total effect on investment decisions of the new market arrangement. Economic studies that ignore the true nature of merchant plant investment will provide misleading conclusions regarding the relative competitiveness of generating technologies.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Engineering Systems Division

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2003

Author dc:creator

• Hottle, Nathan E. (Nathan Edward), 1976-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Paul L. Joskow.

• Technology and Policy Program.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/30032

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/30032