When Supply Meets Demand: The Case of Hourly Spot Electricity Prices

We use a supply-demand framework to model the hourly day-ahead price of electricity (the spot price) based on publicly available information. With the model we can forecast the level and probability of a spike in the spot price defined as the spot price above a certain threshold. Several European countries have recently started publishing day-ahead forecasts of the available supply. This paper shows this forecasted capacity is quite successful in predicting spot price movements 24 h ahead.