Balancing energy strategies in electricity portfolio management

Traditional management of electricity portfolios is focused on the day-ahead market and futures of longer maturity. Within limits, market participants can however also resort to the balancing energy market to close their positions. In this paper, we determine strategic positions in the balancing energy market and identify corresponding economic incentives in an analysis of the German balancing energy demand. We find that those strategies allow an economically optimal starting point for real-time balancing and create a marketplace for flexible capacity that is more open than alternative marketplaces. The strategies we proffer in this paper we believe will contribute to an effective functioning of the electricity market.