Benchmarking time series based forecasting models for electricity balancing market prices

In the trade-off between bidding in the day-ahead electricity market and the real time balancing market, producers need good forecasts for balancing market prices to make informed decisions. A range of earlier published models for forecasting of balancing market prices, including a few extensions, is benchmarked. The models are benchmarked both for one hour-ahead and day-ahead forecast, and both point and interval forecasts are compared. None of the benchmarked models produce informative day-ahead point forecasts, suggesting that information available before the closing of the day-ahead market is effciently reflected in the day-ahead market price rather than the balancing market price. Evaluation of the interval forecasts reveals that models without balancing state information overestimate variance, making them unsuitable for scenario generation.