these conventional plants run less frequently and produce less energy which changes their economics and therefore tend to favour less capitalintensive technologies such as opencycle gas turbines instead of combinedcycle gas turbines these situations of minimum residual load do not necessarily occur during periods of low demand and they have implications for all markets including the dayahead market intraday or balancing and ancillary services markets little consideration has been given to these situations of low load as it is usually sufficient to shut down plants during a few days or at night time when they are not needed