IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/arx/papers/2604.24705.html

Energy-Arena: A Dynamic Benchmark for Operational Energy Forecasting

Author

Listed:
  • Max Kleinebrahm
  • Jonathan Berrisch
  • Philipp Eiser
  • Wolf Fichtner
  • Veit Hagenmeyer
  • Matthias Hertel
  • Nils Koster
  • Sebastian Lerch
  • Ralf Mikut
  • Jan Priesmann
  • Melanie Schienle
  • Benjamin Schaefer
  • Jann Weinand
  • Florian Ziel

Abstract

Energy forecasting research faces a persistent comparability gap that makes it difficult to measure consistent progress over time. Reported accuracy gains are often not directly comparable because models are evaluated under study-specific datasets, time periods, information sets, and scoring setups, while widely used benchmarks and competition datasets are typically tied to fixed historical windows. This paper introduces the Energy-Arena, a dynamic benchmarking platform for operational energy time series forecasting that provides a continuously updated reference point as energy systems evolve. The platform operates as an open, API-based submission system and standardizes challenge definitions and submission deadlines aligned with operational constraints. Performance is reported on rolling evaluation windows via persistent leaderboards. By moving from retrospective backtesting to forward-looking benchmarking, the Energy-Arena enforces standardized ex-ante submission and ex-post evaluation, thereby improving transparency by preventing information leakage and retroactive tuning. The platform is publicly available at Energy-Arena.org.

Suggested Citation

  • Max Kleinebrahm & Jonathan Berrisch & Philipp Eiser & Wolf Fichtner & Veit Hagenmeyer & Matthias Hertel & Nils Koster & Sebastian Lerch & Ralf Mikut & Jan Priesmann & Melanie Schienle & Benjamin Schae, 2026. "Energy-Arena: A Dynamic Benchmark for Operational Energy Forecasting," Papers 2604.24705, arXiv.org.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2604.24705
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2604.24705
    File Function: Latest version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Christoph Bergmeir, 2023. "Common Pitfalls and Better Practices in Forecast Evaluation for Data Scientists," Foresight: The International Journal of Applied Forecasting, International Institute of Forecasters, issue 70, pages 5-12, Q3.
    2. Hong, Tao & Pinson, Pierre & Fan, Shu, 2014. "Global Energy Forecasting Competition 2012," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 30(2), pages 357-363.
    3. Tao Hong & Pierre Pinson & Yi Wang & Rafal Weron & Dazhi Yang & Hamidreza Zareipour, 2020. "Energy forecasting: A review and outlook," WORking papers in Management Science (WORMS) WORMS/20/08, Department of Operations Research and Business Intelligence, Wroclaw University of Science and Technology.
    4. Ziel, Florian & Steinert, Rick & Husmann, Sven, 2015. "Forecasting day ahead electricity spot prices: The impact of the EXAA to other European electricity markets," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 430-444.
    5. Florian Ziel & Rick Steinert & Sven Husmann, 2015. "Forecasting day ahead electricity spot prices: The impact of the EXAA to other European electricity markets," Papers 1501.00818, arXiv.org, revised Dec 2015.
    6. Hilger, Hannes & Witthaut, Dirk & Dahmen, Manuel & Rydin Gorjão, Leonardo & Trebbien, Julius & Cramer, Eike, 2024. "Multivariate scenario generation of day-ahead electricity prices using normalizing flows," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 367(C).
    7. Marcjasz, Grzegorz & Narajewski, Michał & Weron, Rafał & Ziel, Florian, 2023. "Distributional neural networks for electricity price forecasting," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 125(C).
    8. Lago, Jesus & Marcjasz, Grzegorz & De Schutter, Bart & Weron, Rafał, 2021. "Forecasting day-ahead electricity prices: A review of state-of-the-art algorithms, best practices and an open-access benchmark," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 293(C).
    9. Johannes Bracher & Nils Koster & Fabian Krüger & Sebastian Lerch, 2024. "Learning to Forecast: The Probabilistic Time Series Forecasting Challenge," The American Statistician, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 78(1), pages 115-127, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Galarneau-Vincent, Rémi & Gauthier, Geneviève & Godin, Frédéric, 2023. "Foreseeing the worst: Forecasting electricity DART spikes," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 119(C).
    2. Weronika Nitka & Rafał Weron, 2023. "Combining predictive distributions of electricity prices. Does minimizing the CRPS lead to optimal decisions in day-ahead bidding?," Operations Research and Decisions, Wroclaw University of Science and Technology, Faculty of Management, vol. 33(3), pages 105-118.
    3. Tschora, Léonard & Pierre, Erwan & Plantevit, Marc & Robardet, Céline, 2022. "Electricity price forecasting on the day-ahead market using machine learning," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 313(C).
    4. Lago, Jesus & Marcjasz, Grzegorz & De Schutter, Bart & Weron, Rafał, 2021. "Forecasting day-ahead electricity prices: A review of state-of-the-art algorithms, best practices and an open-access benchmark," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 293(C).
    5. Léonard Tschora & Erwan Pierre & Marc Plantevit & Céline Robardet, 2022. "Electricity price forecasting on the day-ahead market using machine learning," Post-Print hal-03621974, HAL.
    6. Chȩć, Katarzyna & Uniejewski, Bartosz & Weron, Rafał, 2025. "Extrapolating the long-term seasonal component of electricity prices for forecasting in the day-ahead market," Journal of Commodity Markets, Elsevier, vol. 37(C).
    7. Sheybanivaziri, Samaneh & Le Dréau, Jérôme & Kazmi, Hussain, 2024. "Forecasting price spikes in day-ahead electricity markets: techniques, challenges, and the road ahead," Discussion Papers 2024/1, Norwegian School of Economics, Department of Business and Management Science.
    8. Brusaferri, Alessandro & Ballarino, Andrea & Grossi, Luigi & Laurini, Fabrizio, 2025. "On-line conformalized neural networks ensembles for probabilistic forecasting of day-ahead electricity prices," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 398(C).
    9. Özen, Kadir & Yıldırım, Dilem, 2021. "Application of bagging in day-ahead electricity price forecasting and factor augmentation," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 103(C).
    10. Bartosz Uniejewski, 2023. "Smoothing Quantile Regression Averaging: A new approach to probabilistic forecasting of electricity prices," Papers 2302.00411, arXiv.org, revised Nov 2024.
    11. Serafin, Tomasz & Weron, Rafał, 2025. "Loss functions in regression models: Impact on profits and risk in day-ahead electricity trading," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 148(C).
    12. Katarzyna Chk{e}'c & Bartosz Uniejewski & Rafa{l} Weron, 2025. "Extrapolating the long-term seasonal component of electricity prices for forecasting in the day-ahead market," Papers 2503.02518, arXiv.org.
    13. Billé, Anna Gloria & Gianfreda, Angelica & Del Grosso, Filippo & Ravazzolo, Francesco, 2023. "Forecasting electricity prices with expert, linear, and nonlinear models," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 39(2), pages 570-586.
    14. Christopher Kath & Florian Ziel, 2018. "The value of forecasts: Quantifying the economic gains of accurate quarter-hourly electricity price forecasts," Papers 1811.08604, arXiv.org.
    15. Simon Hirsch, 2025. "Online Multivariate Regularized Distributional Regression for High-dimensional Probabilistic Electricity Price Forecasting," Papers 2504.02518, arXiv.org, revised Apr 2026.
    16. Jiaxin Zhang & Siyuan Shang, 2025. "Fast and Interpretable Probabilistic Solar Power Forecasting via a Multi-Observation Non-Homogeneous Hidden Markov Model," Energies, MDPI, vol. 18(10), pages 1-14, May.
    17. Hauzenberger, Niko & Pfarrhofer, Michael & Rossini, Luca, 2025. "Sparse time-varying parameter VECMs with an application to modeling electricity prices," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 41(1), pages 361-376.
    18. Voyant, Cyril & Notton, Gilles & Duchaud, Jean-Laurent & Gutiérrez, Luis Antonio García & Bright, Jamie M. & Yang, Dazhi, 2022. "Benchmarks for solar radiation time series forecasting," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 191(C), pages 747-762.
    19. Kath, Christopher & Ziel, Florian, 2018. "The value of forecasts: Quantifying the economic gains of accurate quarter-hourly electricity price forecasts," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 411-423.
    20. Massidda, Luca & Marrocu, Marino, 2023. "Total and thermal load forecasting in residential communities through probabilistic methods and causal machine learning," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 351(C).

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2604.24705. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: arXiv administrators (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://arxiv.org/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.