Kelly Neill, PhD, Assistant Professor in the School of Economics at the University of Sydney, will present the EEEP Seminar Series, “Estimating the Value of Stored Water for Hydroelectric Generation” on October 1, 2025.
Abstract:
Kelly Neill studies how a major hydroelectric scheme operator values its stored water. She aims to inform policy makers who allocate water between hydroelectric and competing uses. Using wholesale electricity market bidding data, she estimates a simple descriptive function of the opportunity cost of hydro generation, directly tied to the operator’s implicit water valuation. The function exhibits nearly complete pass-through of an exchange-traded electricity futures price, and decreases with reservoir volumes and snowfall. It remained stable even when the value of alternative water uses was high, as a connected river ceased-to-flow. These results motivate the development of futures-linked administered water pricing when scheme operators are pivotal in supplying environmental water to areas of the river system.
Bio:
Kelly Neill is an assistant professor in the School of Economics at the University of Sydney. She is also a Non-resident Scholar at the Center for Energy Studies at Rice University. Kelly’s research interests are empirical industrial organization and energy economics, with a focus on natural gas and electricity markets. She has studied how electricity and gas markets interact, the consequences of restricting gas exports, and the value of water stored for hydro-electric generation.