commodity demand vic — VIC1

Victoria's spot price sits at $114.69/MWh with demand at 5,676 MW, firmly in the evening ramp-up that has driven prices higher from a mid-afternoon trough near $65/MWh when demand bottomed around 4,380 MW. The demand-price relationship today is unambiguous: each 500 MW step up from the 4,300–4,500 MW afternoon floor has added roughly $15–25/MWh to clearing prices, with the steepest sensitivity appearing above 5,500 MW as the generation stack tightens and brown coal's 1,655 MW baseload output becomes insufficient to suppress marginal pricing.

The morning peak earlier today was the sharpest demand-price episode on record in this dataset, with demand pushing to 6,275 MW around 7:05 AEST and prices sustaining $128–142/MWh for a sustained two-hour window from 06:00–09:00 AEST. AEMO has issued Manifestly Incorrect Input review notices under NER 3.9.2B covering every interval from 05:00 through 06:30 AEST — traders should treat settled prices across that morning peak window as provisional until confirmed, which materially affects settlement exposure for any position taken during that period.

Demand is now tracking upward from today's post-lunch trough of approximately 4,270 MW at 17:00 AEST, with the current 5,676 MW reading consistent with a typical mid-evening plateau. The latest price forecast targeting 07:00 UTC (18:00 AEST) sits at $131.44/MWh, indicating the dispatch engine is pricing in a further demand lift into the 5,800–6,000 MW range as residential heating load builds — 17.3°C with 71% cloud cover and a marginal heating demand signal supports that trajectory. With solar at zero, wind contributing only 557.5 MW at low wind potential (4.1 km/h), and OCGT providing just 99.7 MW, any incremental demand above 5,800 MW tonight relies entirely on brown coal dispatch and interstate flows, leaving the price stack vulnerable to upside surprises in the $130–145/MWh range.