Peer-to-Peer Basis Risk Management for Renewable Production Parametric Insurance

Abstract: The financial viability of renewable energy projects is challenged by the variability and unpredictability of production due to weather fluctuations. This paper proposes a novel risk management framework combining parametric insurance and peer-to-peer (P2P) risk sharing to address production uncertainty in solar electricity generation. We first design a weather-based parametric insurance scheme to protect against forecast errors, recalibrated at the site level to mitigate geographical basis risk. To handle residual mismatches between insurance payouts and actual losses, we introduce a complementary P2P mechanism that redistributes the remaining basis risk among participants. The method leverages physically based simulation models to reconstruct day-ahead forecasts and realized productions, integrating climate data and solar farm characteristics. A second-order theoretical approximation links heterogeneous local models to a shared weather index, making risk sharing operationally feasible. In an empirical application to 50 German solar farms, our approach reduces the volatility of production losses by 55\%, demonstrating its potential to stabilize revenues and strengthen the resilience of renewable investments.