A Time-Varying Copula Mixture for Hedging the Clean Spark Spread with Wind Power Futures

Abstract

The recently introduced German wind power futures have brought the opportunity to address the problem of volume risk in wind power generation directly. In this paper, we study the hedging benefits of these instruments in the context of gas-fired power plants by employing a strategy that allows trading in the spot clean spark spread and wind power futures. To facilitate hedging decisions, we propose a time-varying copula mixture for the joint behavior of the spot clean spark spread and the daily wind index. The model describes the data surprisingly well, both in terms of the marginals and the dependence structure, while being straightforward and easy to implement. Based on Monte Carlo simulations from the proposed model, the results indicate that significant benefits can be achieved by using wind power futures to hedge the spot clean spark spread. Moreover, a comparison study shows that accounting for asymmetry, tail dependence, and time variation in the dependence structure is especially important in the context of risk management.