A real options approach for pricing electricity tolling agreements

An electricity tolling agreement (or, tolling contact) is a supply contract in which the buyer reserves the right to take the output of an underlying electricity generation asset by paying a predetermined premium to the asset owner. We propose a real options approach to value a tolling contract incorporating operational characteristics of the generation asset and contractual constraints. Dynamic programming and value function approximation by Monte Carlo based least-squares regression are employed to solve the valuation problem. The effects of different electricity price assumptions on the valuation of tolling contracts are examined through numerical examples.