commodity demand vic — VIC1

Victoria's spot price sits at $64.29/MWh with demand at 4,203 MW as of 06:30 AEST, marking the beginning of the evening ramp. The price-demand relationship across today's history is pronounced: demand troughed near 1,870 MW in the early hours (around 01:00–03:00 AEST) when prices fell as deep as -$120.01/MWh, before climbing steadily through the morning peak to around 4,988 MW at 18:40 AEST where prices were contained in the $19–$38/MWh range. The afternoon-to-evening transition is where the price sensitivity sharpens — demand has been rising from a post-midday low of roughly 4,041 MW at 02:00 AEST and prices have responded sharply, moving from the mid-$30s/MWh into the $60–$70/MWh band as the evening load builds. The generation mix at the current interval — 2,036 MW brown coal, 419 MW wind, 90 MW gas OCGT, with solar at zero — reflects the post-sunset position, and the renewable share has fallen to 16.49%, down from a midday high above 33%, which is consistent with the upward price pressure now evident.

Forecast prices for the 07:00 AEST half-hour (21:00 UTC) have converged tightly around $63–$64/MWh across the most recent dispatch runs, indicating the market expects prices to remain near current levels rather than spike further into the evening. The 07:30 AEST (21:30 UTC) forecasts are softer, clustering around $35–$39/MWh, which implies the market anticipates demand will plateau and begin to ease after the peak, consistent with a typical Sunday evening load shape where residential demand rolls off earlier than on weekdays. Today being a Sunday, the afternoon peak reached around 4,988 MW — moderate by Victoria's standards — and the evening peak is unlikely to materially exceed that given the weekend demand profile.

Two market notices are relevant to today's price outlook. AEMO invoked and subsequently cancelled a negative settlement residue constraint on the NSW-to-VIC interconnector (NRM_NSW1_VIC1) between approximately 14:05 and 15:00 AEST, which temporarily constrained flows and contributed to the upward price movement visible in the $41–$46/MWh range across that afternoon window. That constraint is now cancelled. A separate transmission outage affecting the Larcom Creek–Calliope River 275kV line in Queensland (constraint set Q-LCCP_8859) invoked at 02:40 AEST today is active and affects NSW-QLD interconnector capacity; its direct impact on Victorian pricing is indirect but constrains the broader NEM supply stack available to flow south. For the remainder of today, the key watch point is whether the evening demand plateau holds below 4,500 MW — if it does, prices are likely to settle back toward the $35–$45/MWh range by 08:00–08:30 AEST as the load window data signals strongly negative prices returning from 08:00 AEST onward into the overnight trough.