Trading Power at a Utility

Monty09 will give you the best answer on this

45-200k base, depends on firm, very hard

where did all the bb traders come from? UTL, were did most go back to? UTL

were the BB traders able to make BB money trading for utilities? What's the payment structure like at the utility? Are they trading for profit there, or are they just learning the ropes at the utility and then trading for profit elsewhere?

real question would be were the BB traders able to make BB money at the BB? when your CDO departments loses billions your group may not get paid out the way you thought.

Your learning the ropes where ever you are if your a new grad.

I appreciate the responses, but maybe I'm not being clear in my questions. I understand that a Utility is a great place to learn about power trading, but what I'm trying to figure out is what is the potential to earn $$$ while working at the Utility. What is the payment structure like at most utility companies?

Also, is the trading at utilities mostly hedgeing? Do they even trade for profit there?

A large part of utility trade from what I experienced is hedging and guaranteeing long term supply of what is needed in raw products for the various power production assets. My company in particular that means natural gas and coal and hedging that risk with various derivatives. Natural gas is used primarily for peak shaving, which leads to some interesting prop trade opportunities.Other than that i have experienced a lot of brokers dealing with local utilities and large customers to get their long term supply and there is some short term dressing where getting the best deal for your customer starts, most of the baseload is covered long time in advance. A power trader day at my company (working student at german utility, freshmen in engineering) looks like this :

8:00 Traders roll in to work. Analysts already have done a large part of their daily work and provide traders with the materials needed for the trading day by 9 at latest, a large part of that is meterology, how much wind power, rain and so on.

9:30 Customers start calling in, munis, power stations and other traders for their loads that they want to buy or sell for the next day, broken down into hourly trading blocks. That data has to be filted in for the two exchange prices

11:00 APX prices get nominated, EEX one hour later and by 12:35 prices for the next day blocks are set. Now the entire package has to be untangeled again into the individual load for every customer.

14:30 By now you have to have booked the transmission lines with the operator so power can physically flow the next day.

15.30 Analysts meet with traders and porfolio managers and analyse the daily operations and overall issues, long term trends and indications.

Theoretically power can be OTC traded 24/7, which happens in emergencies, forced shutdowns at utility for example and now substitute power has to be brought in. Then it can range late into the night.

Great comments guys. Thanks for the info.