commodity demand qld — QLD1

Queensland spot price sits at $64.83/MWh with demand at 5,631 MW as of 6:30 AEST this Sunday morning. Today's demand profile has traced a textbook weekend shape: prices turned negative from around 7:15 AEST last night as demand fell below 5,400 MW, bottoming out near -$6.54/MWh around 10:00 AEST with demand troughing around 3,944–4,084 MW in the early hours. The morning ramp has been sharp — demand climbed from that overnight trough to a daytime peak of 7,335 MW around 18:30 AEST, with prices responding in lockstep, pushing into the $66–$78/MWh range during the 17:00–20:30 AEST window as the evening load settled into the 5,500–5,700 MW band.

The price-demand relationship today has been highly elastic through the ramp periods but relatively anchored in the $52–$67/MWh corridor once demand stabilises above 5,500 MW. The morning peak demand of ~7,335 MW drove prices to a session high of $77.53/MWh at 06:15 AEST, and the subsequent demand slide through the middle of the day — down to roughly 6,100–6,500 MW — pulled prices back into the low-to-mid $50s/MWh. The evening post-peak period around 19:25 AEST produced a brief spike to $75.10/MWh as demand nudged 5,621 MW, suggesting the market is price-sensitive at supply stack transition points even at moderate demand levels.

Forward forecasts for the 07:00 AEST half-hour (21:00 UTC) are anchored at $53.54/MWh, with the 07:30 AEST period forecast at $37–$40/MWh — consistent with demand continuing to ease through the early morning hours on a Sunday. Overnight periods are forecast negative across multiple intervals, following the same pattern seen last night. Traders should note an active AEMO inter-regional transfer notice: the Larcom Creek–Calliope River 8859 275 kV line suffered an unplanned outage at 02:32 AEST this morning (05/04/2026), invoking constraint set Q-LCCP_8859, which affects the NSW1–QLD1 interconnector. This network constraint has the potential to limit northward import capability into Queensland, tightening the supply stack if demand lifts unexpectedly beyond current forecasts during today's morning ramp.

Generation is currently dominated by black coal at 2,462 MW alongside hydro at 86 MW and minimal contributions from solar (2.6 MW) and gas OCGT (0.16 MW), with renewable penetration at just 3.47% and carbon intensity at 0.8495 tCO2/MWh — reflecting the overnight period where rooftop and utility solar output is absent. As daylight builds today, solar injection will increase, which historically softens midday prices; however, the Larcom Creek outage-driven interconnector constraint and any demand surprise on what is shaping as a moderate-load Sunday will be the primary price determinants through today's trading day.