Pricing weather derivatives: An application to the electrical utility

Abstract

Weather derivatives designed to manage casual changes of weather, as opposed to catastrophic risks of weather, are relatively a new class of financial instruments. There are still many theoretical and practical challenges to the effective use of these instruments. The objective of this paper is to develop a pricing approach for valuing weather derivatives and presents a case study that is practical enough to be used by the risk managers of electrical utility firms. Utilizing daily average temperature data of Guangzhou, China from 1 st January 1978 to 31 st December 2010, this paper adopted a univariate time series model to describe weather behavior dynamics and calculates equilibrium prices for weather futures and options for an electrical utility firm in the region. The results imply that the risk premium is an important part of derivatives prices and the market price of risk affects option values much more than forward prices. It also demonstrates that weather innovation as well as weather risk management significantly affect the utility's financial outcomes.