commodity demand vic — VIC1

Victoria is tracking soft on Saturday morning, with demand at 4,741 MW and spot at $10.22/MWh as of 16:30 AEST. That's roughly 500 MW below the weekly peak of ~5,536 MW seen yesterday morning (Friday 13 March, 16:35 AEST), and the price correlation is clear: when demand crested above 5,400 MW through Friday's morning and evening peaks, spot consistently printed $12–$32/MWh, with brief spikes to $31.69/MWh. Today's Saturday load profile is running materially lower, consistent with reduced commercial and industrial activity, and prices are responding accordingly.

The overnight demand trough tells the dominant story for today's price floor. Demand fell to a low of around 3,833 MW between 12:20–13:35 AEST yesterday, coinciding with sustained negative pricing as low as -$52.25/MWh — driven by rooftop and utility solar suppressing net demand against must-run brown coal (1,619 MW at last read) and wind (439 MW). Today's weekend demand trajectory will follow the same solar-driven suppression pattern through midday, with the generation mix showing zero utility solar contribution at 16:30 AEST but rooftop penetration expected to compress net demand significantly from around 09:00–15:00 AEST. Prices through that solar window are likely to repeat yesterday's negative-to-near-zero pattern given similar weather conditions (100% cloud cover noted, though solar potential is flagged at zero — this reduces the depth of the midday trough relative to a clear day).

The afternoon demand rebuild is the key price risk to watch. Yesterday, demand recovered from the ~3,000 MW midday trough to above 5,400 MW by 05:00–07:00 AEST (evening), dragging prices from deeply negative back into the $19–$32/MWh range. Today's Saturday evening ramp will be shallower — weekend residential load without commercial load — but brown coal's inflexibility means the grid will transition from oversupply to adequacy relatively quickly once solar drops off post-15:00 AEST. Expect prices to recover into the $10–$20/MWh range through the 16:00–20:00 AEST window, with spike risk if the ramp rate outpaces available flexible generation. No market notices are active, so no forced outage or constraint events are currently amplifying demand-price sensitivity today.