At first glance, the situation looks hopeless for an electricity trader like Christian Hövelhaus. For months he has had to watch the prices on the Leipzig power exchange climb; compared to 2020, they have increased almost fivefold in 2021. But Hövelhaus sees things differently: “A lot of wind power in the grid often depresses stock market prices radically; There are almost always time windows when electricity in Leipzig becomes cheap for a short time, mostly at night, when there is little demand and a lot of wind, ”says the head of the Essen electricity broker Esforin, who has developed a business model from this. Hövelhaus and his 40 colleagues – engineers, programmers and professional electricity traders – have programmed algorithms with which their customers can obtain electricity in such a way that they benefit from the short-term effects.
