The widespread introduction of competitive mechanisms during the 1990s changed the panorama of the electricity industry around the world. Vertically integrated and centrally operated systems were replaced by market environments in which generators became free to make their production and investment decisions and, at the same time, assume the risk of their chosen strategies. Both the dispatch and the energy spot price in such markets result from two-sided auctions in which producing and consuming agents submit their price-quantity bids, expressing how much energy they are willing to buy or sell. The accepted bids, which commit agents to either deliver or consume power, are set a day before the energy delivery. However, since unexpected events may occur - such as changes in weather conditions or breakdowns of generation turbines - some adjustments might have to be done in order to compensate for the unbalances between total generation and load. These adjustments usually take place in the balancing markets. In the present work, we propose an optimization model for a price-taking hydropower producer who trades energy in the Nord Pool – the competitive electricity market encompassing the Nordic countries that comprises a balancing market called Elbas. The proposed model represents in details the operating aspects of the plants and takes into account the possibility of trading energy in the Elbas market. The model represents the level of risk aversion of the agent in its objective function, by maximizing a convex combination of the expected value and the CVaR (Conditional Value at Risk) of the net income obtained. Scenarios of spot and Elbas prices were generated based on time series models ARMA and GARCH and, in order to reduce the computational effort and enable the use of an adequate number of scenarios, Benders decomposition and Benders Multicut methods were applied. The developed model allowed us to study the behavior of agents in the spot and Elbas markets under two different viewpoints: from the perspective of the generators, which aim at maximizing its operating income; and from the viewpoint of the regulator, whose focus is on analyzing whether the Elbas market meets its role of balancing supply and demand, rather than leading generators to speculate through combined strategies in both markets. All these effects were studied and analyzed for different risk-averse profiles of the agents, and for different market conditions, i.e., considering periods of different volatilities of Elbas market prices and different water values (or opportunity costs) stored in the reservoirs of the hydroelectric power plants. From the perspective of the agent, the study showed that there are incentives for the risk- neutral agent to try to take advantage of possible higher prices in the Elbas. From the regulator’s viewpoint, the results show that the risk-neutral agents, depending on market conditions, choose to shift some of its energy generation to the Elbas market, showing their desire for higher incomes regardless of the risk associated with their decisions. The risk-averse agent chooses to trade less energy in Elbas, especially in volatile periods, thereby avoiding the worst scenarios. Finally, considering that energy companies are usually risk-averse, the adjustments made in the Elbas market were shown to be adequate, naturally meeting its role without requiring interventions from the regulator.