commodity demand vic — VIC1

Victoria spot price sits at -$4.26/MWh with demand at 3,662 MW at 18:20 AEST — a low-demand Sunday morning profile that is driving sustained negative pricing. Solar generation is ramping (58.6 MW at 08:00 UTC, still early in the generation window) alongside 353 MW of wind, and with brown coal locked in at 1,340 MW of baseload, supply is structurally exceeding demand at this point in the day. The price-demand relationship through this morning is direct and steep: when demand fell below 3,250 MW in the mid-morning solar window on Saturday, prices collapsed to -$52/MWh; the current 3,662 MW level is sitting in the mild negative band consistent with renewable oversupply but without the acute curtailment pressure seen at the trough.

The day's price trajectory is already well-established in the history data. Demand troughed around 2,050–2,200 MW during the solar peak hours (UTC 11:00–14:00, or 21:00–00:00 AEST Saturday night into early Sunday), with prices grinding between -$33 and -$60/MWh across that window — a textbook low-demand, high-renewable oversupply outcome on a mild Sunday (14.2°C, heating demand just 3.8, zero cooling demand). As demand recovered through the late afternoon and evening, prices snapped hard into positive territory: $50–$60/MWh sustained across the 03:00–09:00 UTC window (13:00–19:00 AEST Saturday evening peak), with demand reaching 5,260 MW. That evening peak price signal is the critical reference point for today's equivalent window.

From here, demand is set to follow a typical Sunday trajectory: continued morning trough conditions with prices likely remaining negative as solar output builds toward its midday peak. Expect the -$30 to -$60/MWh range to re-emerge between approximately 10:00–14:00 AEST as rooftop and utility solar suppresses grid demand well below the 3,000 MW mark, with brown coal baseload unable to back off fast enough. The afternoon recovery — demand climbing back through 4,000–4,500 MW from 15:00 AEST — will determine whether prices return to the $40–$60/MWh band seen Saturday evening, though Sunday's typically lower residential and commercial load means peak demand may fall 300–500 MW short of Saturday's 5,260 MW, capping the price upside accordingly. Grid stress score of 66.1 reflects that intermittency-driven volatility, not scarcity, is today's dominant risk.