This paper investigates whether coal- or biomass-fired Integrated Gasification Combined-Cycle (IGCC) power plants can serve as an economically viable future technology for providing clean electricity and heat in Germany. In the context of CO2 emission reduction in power generation, energy...

The promotion of electricity from renewable energies in Germany causes difficulties in the profitable operation of many modern conventional power plants. Nevertheless, fluctuating availability of power from renewable energy sources requires flexible conventional plants, i.e. power plants which...

The liberalization of the energy markets and the merit order effect lead to difficulties in the operation even of modern, highly energy-effcient conventional power plants ('missing money problem'). Their operation often becomes unprofitable, so that sometimes the only remaining option is to...

We study the economic viability and optimal sizing and siting of a hybrid plant that combines a ringwall hydro storage system with wind and solar power plants (ringwall storage hybrid power plant, RSHPP). A real options model is introduced to analyze the economics of an onshore RSHPP, and in...

In this paper we investigate how changes in the support scheme may affect electricity generation from agricultural Combined Heat and Power (CHP) biogas plants in Germany. A recursive Multi-Agent System (MAS) for investment decision-making is coupled with GIS data. The spatial-temporal diffusion...

In this paper we analyze how development of the economics related to CCS technology in coal-fired power plants affects market diffusion. Specifically, we (1) show the (significant) variance in economic expectations for commercial-grade CCS hard coal power plants observed in selected recent...

The aim of this study is to analyze the impact of credit risk mitigation via margining on the optimal portfolio selection for power plants. We develop a model to estimate margining cashflows that is based on the clearing framework of the European Commodity Clearing AG (ECC), on stochastic...

In this paper, we develop a multi-factor real options model for a two-stage investment problem where a coal-fired power plant is later retrofitted with carbon capture and storage (CCS). A capture-ready power plant with lower retrofit costs is compared with a conventional one and higher CCS...

In the electricity sector, most of the trades are still done in the OTC market without direct mitigation of credit risk. Newer discussions fuelled by the European Commission (EUCOM 2009a,b) show that there is a political will to enforce a stronger collateralization policy on all European...

The value of power generation technologies can be derived from the investment cost, the plant's expected lifetime, and the discounted cash-flows, the latter of which typically are a combination of several underlyings, such as the price of fuel, electricity, and CO2. To determine this value, most...