commodity demand qld — QLD1

Queensland spot price sits at $95.82/MWh with demand at 6,635 MW as of 06:35 AEST, tracking the familiar evening demand ramp that pushed prices firmly into the $90–$100/MWh band from around 06:05. The day's demand arc is now well-established in the data: a deep overnight trough of ~5,130 MW around 10:35 AEST preceded a steady morning climb through the 6,000 MW threshold from roughly 14:35, with the current 6,635 MW level representing a ~29% lift off the overnight floor. Price response to that climb has been near-linear — every 500 MW step up in demand from the 15:00 trough correlated with roughly a $15–20/MWh price step, confirming tight supply stack conditions in the evening thermal band with black coal carrying ~2,922 MW and renewables contributing just 2.88% of generation at 0.8546 tCO2/MWh.

The peak demand load from the overnight history peaked at 8,372 MW around 18:40 AEST at a price of $118.73/MWh — that morning business-hours peak is the clearest price ceiling benchmark for today's equivalent period. Forward forecasts for the 07:00 AEST settlement window are anchored at $91.75/MWh across multiple forecast runs, suggesting AEMO's pre-dispatch model sees demand easing slightly from current levels as the evening ramp plateaus. The forecast RRP has been remarkably stable across successive dispatch runs — ranging only $91.75–$95.82/MWh — indicating no material supply constraint or outage is expected to drive prices beyond current levels for the near-term window.

Demand-side risk for the remainder of today centres on how quickly overnight load falls from the current 6,635 MW back toward the ~5,100–5,400 MW range typical of the 00:00–04:00 AEST window. That trajectory drove prices to zero and negative territory for an extended block overnight, and the load windows data confirms the same pattern is expected to repeat from approximately 08:00 AEST onward, with forecast prices collapsing to negative through the early-hours window. Traders with flexible load or storage should note the steep overnight price gradient: the spread between current $95.82/MWh and the forecast sub-zero prices from 08:00 AEST represents a significant arbitrage window of well over $95/MWh within a 90-minute horizon.

Note that AEMO has issued multiple active "Prices Subject to Review" notices covering intervals from 04:00 through 06:30 AEST this morning under NER clause 3.9.2B (Manifestly Incorrect Inputs). The 05:40 interval has been confirmed unchanged, but intervals across the early-morning ramp — precisely the period where price jumped from near-zero to $50–$75/MWh as demand crossed 6,300 MW — remain under review. Participants should treat settled prices for those intervals as provisional until AEMO issues confirmation notices.