commodity demand qld — QLD1

Queensland's spot price sits at $85.83/MWh with demand at 6,251 MW as of 6:30 AEST, up sharply from the overnight trough of around 3,965 MW recorded in the early hours. The demand-price relationship today has been tightly coupled: prices turned negative — reaching as low as -$8.80/MWh — through the 1:10–4:45 AEST window when demand sat in the 3,965–4,290 MW range, then snapped positive and climbed rapidly as the morning ramp commenced around 5:15 AEST. By 7:30 AEST demand had crossed 7,480 MW and prices briefly touched $111.11/MWh, illustrating a price elasticity profile where each 1,000 MW increase in load from the overnight floor correlates broadly with $25–35/MWh of upward price movement under current supply stack conditions.

Today's demand arc followed a textbook April weekday shape: a deep overnight trough, an aggressive 2,500 MW morning ramp between 5:00 and 8:30 AEST, a midday plateau in the 7,500–7,630 MW range, then a steady pullback through the afternoon to the current 6,251 MW. Prices moderated in line with that demand retreat, easing from the $95–111/MWh morning peak band to the low-to-mid $70s/MWh through the 7:00–9:30 AEST period, before stabilising in the $71–$92/MWh range during the afternoon and early evening. The generation mix is currently dominated by black coal at 2,425 MW alongside 87 MW of hydro, with solar effectively zero at this hour, which removes any midday price suppression effect that is visible on sunnier days.

The forward price signal points firmly to a second demand and price escalation through the evening peak. Forecasts for the 7:00 AEST half-hour (21:00 UTC) have converged to approximately $71.83/MWh, but load windows indicate demand is already rebuilding — the 6:251 MW current reading is 1,400 MW above the overnight floor — and the pattern through the price history shows that each evening the 6,000–7,500 MW demand band consistently delivers prices in the $72–$112/MWh range. Overnight, prices are forecast to return negative from approximately 8:30 AEST onwards, with load window prices reaching as low as -$20/MWh in the 11:30 AEST–2:30 AEST corridor, presenting a clear shift-load opportunity for flexible industrial and commercial consumers.

One market notice is directly relevant to Queensland demand management today: AEMO recorded a non-conformance on BARRON-1 at 1:05–1:10 AEST (-29 MW), a small hydro deviation that had negligible price impact given the surplus overnight conditions. The more material system notices concern South Australia — a direction and associated voltage-related intervention events — which may modulate QLD–SA interconnector flows and add a degree of uncertainty to Queensland's southern export position through the afternoon and evening periods.