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The fine structure of electricity price volatility

Thomas K. Kloster, Fred Espen Benth

arXiv 13 May 2026 · Finance — General

arXiv:2605.13320 · PDF · DOI · OpenAlex · Extracted main text

Abstract

We conduct the first rigorous study of electricity price volatility for the full panel of electricity prices across three European generation zones. By interpreting the observed day-ahead prices as local averages of a latent price process governed by a stochastic partial differential equation, we develop estimators of the weekly integrated variance. The inherently infinite dimensional setting introduce several complications that are not relevant in the conventional finite dimensional semimartingale setting, and we spend considerable effort in dealing with these. In particular, we must account for both mean-reversion in prices and semigroup-smoothing in the estimated variance. We provide a detailed decomposition and interpretation of the empirical estimates across three vastly different European generation zones, namely Germany, Norway, and Spain. Our findings indicate that each zone has very different drivers of volatility, and that the impact of generation variables differs considerably. We document that leverage effects appear to be present at first sight, but disappear once we condition on suitable state variables, thereby showing that electricity price volatility does not generally exhibit asymmetric responses to price shocks.

Citation extraction

34
references
47
in-text mentions
34
distinct cited
6
self-citations
13,217
main-text words

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Most heavily cited references

The works this paper leans on most, across its whole bibliography — not restricted to papers in our corpus. Ranked by composite intensity, which combines how often a work is mentioned, how many sections mention it, and how much of that falls in the main text rather than the appendix.

ReferenceIntensityMentionsSectionsMain text
1Kloster, Thomas K (2026) An ambit field framework for the full panel of day-ahead electricity prices self1.00053100%
2Fred Espen Benth and Dennis Schroers and Almut E.D. Veraart (2022) A weak law of large numbers for realised covariation in a Hilbert space setting self0.81142100%
3Benth, Fred Espen and Schroers, Dennis and Veraart, Almut E. D (2024) A feasible central limit theorem for realised covariation of SPDEs in the context of functional data self0.81142100%
4Barndorff-Nielsen, Ole E. and Shephard, Neil (2004) Econometric Analysis of Realized Covariation: High Frequency Based Covariance, Regression, and Correlation in Financial Economics0.64422100%
5Da Prato, Giuseppe and Zabczyk, Jerzy (2014) Stochastic Equations in Infinite Dimensions0.5112250%
6Ronald Huisman and Christian Huurman and Ronald Mahieu (2007) Hourly electricity prices in day-ahead markets0.51121100%
7Barndorff-Nielsen, Ole E. and Benth, Fred Espen and Veraart, Almut E… (2014) Modelling Electricity Futures by Ambit Fields self0.40511100%
8Torben G. Andersen and Tim Bollerslev (1998) Answering the Skeptics: Yes, Standard Volatility Models do Provide Accurate Forecasts0.40511100%
9Torben G. Andersen and Tim Bollerslev and Francis X. Diebold and Hei… (2001) The distribution of realized stock return volatility0.40511100%
10Torben G. Andersen and Tim Bollerslev and Francis X. Diebold and Pau… (2003) Modeling and Forecasting Realized Volatility0.40511100%

Showing the top 10 of 34 scored citations.

Cited by, within the corpus

arXiv econ.EM papers that cite this one, ranked by how heavily they lean on it.

Citing paperIntensityMentionsSections
1Forecasting of volatility and risk premia in electricity markets1.000115