Commodity Demand — SA1: Friday 10 April 2026
South Australia's spot price sits at $0/MWh at 06:30 AEST on Saturday 11 April, with total demand at 1,293 MW — a Saturday morning trough reflecting typical weekend residential and light commercial load patterns. Wind is generating 414 MW and gas CCGT contributing 43 MW, with solar output at zero in the pre-dawn period. The carbon intensity is 0.0461 tCO2/MWh at 90.6% renewable penetration, consistent with overnight wind-dominant conditions.
The price history across the past 24 hours reveals a clear demand-price relationship: as demand collapsed from a daytime peak of around 1,744 MW (reached near 18:55 AEST Friday) to an overnight trough of 684 MW around 12:35 AEST, spot prices moved deeper into negative territory, reaching as low as -$34.90/MWh at 14:20 AEST and sustaining negative prices continuously throughout the night. The most acute negative pricing — between -$12/MWh and -$20/MWh — coincided with demand sitting below 1,000 MW between approximately 12:00 and 15:30 AEST, illustrating the surplus generation condition that persists when low overnight demand meets dispatched wind capacity. The current $0/MWh print marks a marginal recovery as Saturday morning demand begins to lift from the overnight floor.
Forecasts for the next two half-hour intervals (07:00 and 07:30 AEST) point to prices of -$0.10/MWh and -$1.03/MWh respectively, signalling the market expects demand to remain contained and surplus conditions to persist through early morning. The load window data projects deep negative pricing extending through to at least 16:30 AEST locally, with forecast prices ranging from -$27/MWh to -$69/MWh across the pre-dawn and morning periods — the 09:00–13:00 AEST window (04:00–08:00 UTC) showing the most negative outcomes as overnight wind generation meets the Saturday demand trough. Price relief into positive territory is unlikely before demand climbs back toward the 1,500–1,700 MW range seen during last Friday's business-day peak.
The key demand-side watch point today is the pace of the morning ramp. On Friday, demand rose from around 740 MW at 15:10 AEST to 1,744 MW by 18:55 AEST — a 1,000 MW ramp in under four hours — before prices recovered toward zero. A similar ramp is plausible this afternoon but attenuated by the weekend load profile, meaning negative or near-zero prices are likely to persist well into the afternoon. There are no SA1-specific market notices active; the contingency reclassifications in the data are confined to TAS1 and VIC1 transmission infrastructure and carry no direct demand-side implication for South Australia today.