Technical efficiency of thermal power units through a stochastic frontier

Abstract

This work presents a model to obtain a stochastic frontier production function of a Mexican power generation company. The stochastic frontier allows us to evaluate the technical efficiency of an energy producer according of the level of inputs. Electricity generation based on thermal generation is highly expensive due to operational inefficiency of thermal power plants. At the moment, in Mexico, technical efficiency of thermal power units has not been studied for the national electricity system. Therefore, in order to know the productivity levels of thermal generation, an empirical application of the stochastic frontier model is obtained using a panel data of thermoelectric units from the Mexican electricity system for the 2009-2013 period.