A study of electricity price volatility for the Brazilian energy market

Abstract

In the recent months, the price of the electricity in Brazil has presented a high level of volatility. As an example, the verified highest electricity price return in March 2007 was almost 260%. The volatility of a commodity plays an important role in the study of the risk management. It also improves the efficiency in parameter estimation and the accuracy in interval forecast. In this work, the Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedastic (GARCH) model is used to study the price volatility in the Brazilian market in four geographical regions. The results have shown that the model is able to estimate the behavior of the volatility.