Effect of electricity market price uncertainty modelling on the profitability assessment of offshore wind energy through an integrated lifecycle techno-economic model

According to the Contracts for Difference (CfD) scheme introduced to support the deployment of offshore wind installations, an electricity generation party is paid the difference between a constant "strike price" (determined be means of a competitive auction) and the average UK market electricity price for every MWh of power output produced. The scheme lasts for 15 years, after which the electricity output is sold on the average market price. To this end, estimating the long term profitability of the investment greatly depends on the forecasted market prices. This paper presents the simulation results of future electricity prices based on three different simulation methods, namely: the Geometric Brownian motion (GBM), the Autoregressive Integrated Moving average (ARIMA) and a model combining Mean-Reversion and Jump-Diffusion (MRJD) processes. A number of simulation paths are generated for a time horizon of 10 years and they are introduced to a fully integrated techno-economic model developed by the authors. As a result, joint probability distributions of the NPV derived from the three different methods are presented. This study is relevant to investors and policy makers to check the viability of an investment and to predict its stochastic temporal return profile. (paper)