Stephan Schlüter

Stephan Schlüter, Sven Pappert, Martin Neumann

Reliable gas price forecasts are an essential information for gas and energy traders, for risk managers and also economists. However, ahead of the war in Ukraine Europe began to suffer from substantially increased and volatile gas prices which culminated in the aftermath of the North Stream 1 explosion. This shock changed both trend and volatility structure of the prices and has considerable effects on forecasting models. In this study we investigate whether modern machine learning methods such as neural networks are more resilient against such changes than statistical models such as autoregressive moving average (ARMA) models with conditional heteroskedasticity, or copula-based time series models. Thereby the focus lies on interval forecasting and applying respective evaluation measures. As data, the Front Month prices from the Dutch Title Transfer Facility, currently the predominant European exchange, are used. We see that, during the shock period, most models underestimate the variance while overestimating the variance in the after-shock period. Furthermore, we recognize that, during the shock, the simpler models, i.e. an ARMA model with conditional heteroskedasticity and the multilayer perceptron (a neural network), perform best with regards to prediction interval coverage. Interestingly, the widely-used long-short term neural network is outperformed by its competitors.

Abhinav Das, Stephan Schlüter

Accurate electricity price forecasting is critical for strategic decision-making in deregulated electricity markets, where volatility stems from complex supply-demand dynamics and external factors. Traditional point forecasts often fail to capture inherent uncertainties, limiting their utility for risk management. This work presents a framework for probabilistic electricity price forecasting using Bayesian neural networks (BNNs) with Monte Carlo (MC) dropout, training separate models for each hour of the day to capture diurnal patterns. A critical assessment and comparison with the benchmark model, namely: generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity with exogenous variable (GARCHX) model and the LASSO estimated auto-regressive model (LEAR), highlights that the proposed model outperforms the benchmark models in terms of point prediction and intervals. This work serves as a reference for leveraging probabilistic neural models in energy market predictions.

Abhinav Das, Stephan Schlüter, Lorenz Schneider

This paper presents a new hybrid model for predicting German electricity prices. The algorithm is based on a combination of Gaussian Process Regression (GPR) and Support Vector Regression (SVR). Although GPR is a competent model for learning stochastic patterns within data and for interpolation, its performance for out-of-sample data is not very promising. By choosing a suitable data-dependent covariance function, we can enhance the performance of GPR for the German hourly power prices being tested. However, since the out-of-sample prediction is dependent on the training data, the prediction is vulnerable to noise and outliers. To overcome this issue, a separate prediction is calculated using SVR, which applies margin-based optimization. This method is advantageous when dealing with non-linear processes and outliers, since only certain necessary points (support vectors) in the training data are responsible for regression. The individual predictions are then linearly combined using uniform weights. When tested on historic German power prices, this approach outperforms the publicly available benchmarks, namely the LASSO estimated autoregressive regression model, deep neural network provided in the recent research by [1].

Andreas Lebedev, Abhinav Das, Sven Pappert et al.

Precise probabilistic forecasts are fundamental for energy risk management, and there is a wide range of both statistical and machine learning models for this purpose. Inherent to these probabilistic models is some form of uncertainty quantification. However, most models do not capture the full extent of uncertainty, which arises not only from the data itself but also from model and distributional choices. In this study, we examine uncertainty quantification in state-of-the-art statistical and deep learning probabilistic forecasting models for electricity price forecasting in the German market. In particular, we consider deep distributional neural networks (DDNNs) and augment them with an ensemble approach, Monte Carlo (MC) dropout, and conformal prediction to account for model uncertainty. Additionally, we consider the LASSO-estimated autoregressive (LEAR) approach combined with quantile regression averaging (QRA), generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (GARCH), and conformal prediction. Across a range of performance metrics, we find that the LEAR-based models perform well in terms of probabilistic forecasting, irrespective of the uncertainty quantification method. Furthermore, we find that DDNNs benefit from incorporating both data and model uncertainty, improving both point and probabilistic forecasting. Uncertainty itself appears to be best captured by the models using conformal prediction. Overall, our extensive study shows that all models under consideration perform competitively. However, their relative performance depends on the choice of metrics for point and probabilistic forecasting.

Abhinav Das, Stephan Schlüter

This work integrates Bayesian regime detection with conditional neural processes for 24-hour electricity price prediction in the German market. Our methodology integrates regime detection using a disentangled sticky hierarchical Dirichlet process hidden Markov model (DS-HDP-HMM) applied to daily electricity prices. Each identified regime is subsequently modeled by an independent conditional neural process (CNP), trained to learn localized mappings from input contexts to 24-dimensional hourly price trajectories, with final predictions computed as regime-weighted mixtures of these CNP outputs. We rigorously evaluate R-NP against deep neural networks (DNN) and Lasso estimated auto-regressive (LEAR) models by integrating their forecasts into diverse battery storage optimization frameworks, including price arbitrage, risk management, grid services, and cost minimization. This operational utility assessment revealed complex performance trade-offs: LEAR often yielded superior absolute profits or lower costs, while DNN showed exceptional optimality in specific cost-minimization contexts. Recognizing that raw prediction accuracy doesn't always translate to optimal operational outcomes, we employed TOPSIS as a comprehensive multi-criteria evaluation layer. Our TOPSIS analysis identified LEAR as the top-ranked model for 2021, but crucially, our proposed R-NP model emerged as the most balanced and preferred solution for 2021, 2022 and 2023.