Volue Improves Real-Time Data Flow With Revamped Intraday Live Prices Forecast

Volue has modernised Intraday Live, the tool that visualises real-time data from the European Power Exchange EPEX, to improve data flow and meet the challenges of the new energy market.

Published

Aug 9, 2022

Person working on a laptop with volue software

As Europe interconnects power grids and integrates more countries into a single power market, Volue has upgraded its Intraday Live forecast to improve data flow.

“After rethinking the implementation of the Intraday Live solution, we revamped the entire back-end system,” says Maximilian Möller, Senior System Developer at Volue. “All the technology we had used before was more or less removed.”

The updated Volue Intraday Live uses Pub/Sub, an asynchronous service-to-service communication method by Google Cloud. Pub/Sub, or Publish/Subscribe messaging, is used in serverless and microservices architectures.

“Simply put, it is more controllable. We now have much better control of how the data flows through our back-end system.”

In addition, the tool calculates aggregations, such as volume weighted average price, while the data is processed and published.

The new implementation is split into smaller components, making it easier to understand what each component does.

“This makes the new solution scalable. For example, we can fairly easily add other power exchanges, such as NordPool for Nordic data. This is just an example of what is possible to achieve with the new design.”

Photo of Maximilian Moller

We now have much better control of how the data flows through our back-end system.

Maximilian Möller

Senior System Developer at Volue

How Volue Intraday Live works

Customers of Volue Intraday Live can view the real-time visualisations in the Trading Chart or in the table format Order Book.

They can select a trading day, a delivery area (Germany, UK, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, or Switzerland), and choose a product type (e.g. hourly, quarterly, and half-hourly) as well as product.

On the Trading Chart, black dots represent the executed trades. With an update frequency of 10 seconds, customers can follow the trading in close to real-time.

Live prices power market forecast screen2

The day-ahead price is visualised as a line. This makes it easy to see if the current price is above or below the day-ahead price.

The chart expands to the right as new trades come in.

“Under the chart, we have integrated Insight Price Predict, the Insight forecast, so customers can get a better understanding of how current trades compare to forecasted prices or the prices from the day before.”

In addition to the Trading Chart, customers can follow the Order Book – a representation of what people at the power exchange want to sell and buy.

“We show the sell orders at the top and the buy orders at the bottom. Every time prices match, a trade is executed automatically. This visualises what is ‘open’, what people want to sell.”

The Order Book is also integrated with Insight Price Predict and, again, customers can compare current trades with the forecast.

Live prices power market forecast screen

Part of the Volue Insight API

Intraday Live has its own API meaning that customers can not only view the Trading Chart and Order Book through the app, but they can also access the data programmatically.

The Intraday Live curves are also available as part of the Volue Insight API which contains all Insight time-series data. The Volue Insight API is a one-stop shop for those looking for fundamental data and forecasts to put through their own models.

Through the API, customers can access the aggregations in close to real-time.