Intraday balancing energy

Commissioned by multi client

Lion Hirth, Jonathan Mühlenpfordt

2021

Short-term electricity trading is crucial for system stability, particularly in markets where wind and solar provide the bulk of energy. While much market information is public, the activation of balancing reserves is known in real time only to those providing the reserves – an information edge in wholesale trading. For five German trading houses, collectively providing market access to well over 10 GW of renewable capacity, we analyzed all 80 million transactions on the EPEX intraday platform and all 50 million aFRR and mFRR activations of 2020–21 in minute-resolution regressions. The result: reserve activation is reliably followed by systematic, highly significant price movements in all products delivering within the following two hours. This report was originally published in German.