[F-W-M]

Energy costs vary not only over the day but per quarter hour in each hour, e.g. during the morning the last quarter is cheaper than the first for each hour. So you don't necessarily have to shut down the machines, maybe you can just move the most energy expensive phase into another quarter.

If you are brewing beer you have times where you have to heat it and times where it needs to sit at a given temperature. Try to optimize the process to heat during cheaper quarter hours.

[stephen_g]

In Australia we've moved all the way to five-minute (!) settlement in our electricity market. Used to be 30 minutes but they switched in 2021 to give better price signals for very fast response technology like battery banks, as well as the demand response.

[F-W-M]

Do you have a auction + continuous market as well? With same or with different granularity?

Europe has an day-ahead auction with 1h products and continuous trading with quarter hours as the smallest product (still varying from country to country).