Rough electricity: a new fractal multi-factor model of electricity spot prices

Mikkel Bennedsen ()
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Mikkel Bennedsen: Aarhus University and CREATES, Postal: Department of Economics and Business Economics, Fuglesangs Allé 4, 8210 Aarhus V, Denmark

CREATES Research Papers from Department of Economics and Business Economics, Aarhus University

Abstract: We introduce a new mathematical model of electricity spot prices which accounts for the most important stylized facts of these time series: seasonality, spikes, stochastic volatility and mean reversion. Empirical studies have found a possible fifth stylized fact, fractality, and our approach explicitly incorporates this into the model of the prices. Our setup generalizes the popular Ornstein Uhlenbeck-based multi-factor framework of Benth et al. (2007) and allows us to perform statistical tests to distinguish between an Ornstein Uhlenbeck-based model and a fractal model. Further, through the multi-factor approach we account for seasonality and spikes before estimating - and making inference on - the degree of fractality. This is novel in the literature and we present simulation evidence showing that these precautions are crucial to accurate estimation. Lastly, we estimate our model on recent data from six European energy exchanges and we find statistical evidence of fractality in five out of six markets. As an application of our model, we show how, in these five markets, a fractal component improves short term forecasting of the prices.

Keywords: Energy markets; electricity prices; roughness; fractals; mean reversion; multi-factor modelling; forecasting. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C22 C51 C52 C53 Q41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 33
Date: 2015-09-18
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ecm, nep-ene and nep-for
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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