We propose a multivariate elastic net regression forecast model for German quarter-hourly electricity spot markets. While the literature is diverse on day-ahead prediction approaches, both the intraday continuous and intraday call-auction prices have not been studied intensively with a clear focus on predictive power. Besides electricity price forecasting, we check for the impact of early day-ahead (DA) EXAA prices on intraday forecasts. Another novelty of this paper is the complementary discussion of economic benefits. A precise estimation is worthless if it cannot be utilized. We elaborate possible trading decisions based upon our forecasting scheme and analyze their monetary effects. We find that even simple electricity trading strategies can lead to substantial economic impact if combined with a decent forecasting technique.

The intraday cross-border project (XBID) allows intraday market participants to trade based on a shared order book independent of countries or local energy exchanges. This theoretically leads to an efficient allocation of cross-border capacities and ensures maximum market liquidity across European intraday markets. If this postulation holds, the technical implementation of XBID might mark a regime switch in any intraday price series. We present a regression-based model for intraday markets with a particular focus on the German European Power Exchange (EPEX) intraday market and evaluate if the introduction of XBID influence prices, volume or volatility. We analyze partial volume-weighted average prices and standard deviations as well as cross-border volumes at different trading times. We are able to falsify our initial hypothesis assuming a measurable influence of changes caused by XBID. Thus, this paper contributes to the ongoing discussion on appropriate modeling of intraday markets and demonstrates that XBID does not necessarily need to be included in any model.

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Motivated by a practical problem faced by an energy trading company in Poland, we investigate the profitability of balancing intermittent generation from renewable energy sources (RES). We consider a company that buys electricity generated by a pool of wind farms and pays their owners the day-ahead system price minus a commission, then sells the actually generated volume in the day-ahead and balancing markets. We evaluate the profitability (measured by the Sharpe ratio) and market risk faced by the energy trader as a function of the commission charged and the adopted trading strategy. We show that publicly available, country-wide RES generation forecasts can be significantly improved using a relatively simple regression model and that trading on this information yields significantly higher profits for the company. Moreover, we address the issue of contract design as a key performance driver. We argue that by offering tolerance range contracts, which transfer some of the risk to wind farm owners, both parties can bilaterally agree on a suitable framework that meets individual risk appetite and profitability expectations.