Commodity Demand — VIC1: Friday 10 April 2026

Victoria's spot price sits at $0/MWh at 06:30 AEST with demand at 4,429 MW — a Saturday morning low that reflects the tail end of overnight off-peak conditions. The price trajectory across the past 24 hours tells a clear demand-driven story: demand peaked near 5,935 MW around 18:30–18:50 AEST on Friday, yet prices remained deeply negative throughout that period (ranging from -$2.50 to -$3.50/MWh), indicating supply was consistently outpacing load even at the daily maximum. The overnight trough saw demand fall to approximately 3,887–3,935 MW between 04:00–05:00 AEST, coinciding with the most aggressively negative prices of the period — intervals hitting -$19.99/MWh and -$33.58/MWh around 14:20–14:45 UTC (00:20–00:45 AEST) — driven by wind generation of 1,376 MW and brown coal running at 1,086 MW providing a structural supply floor that demand could not absorb at positive prices.

The demand-price sensitivity today is asymmetric: price responds sharply to supply surplus rather than to demand increases. Even the morning ramp from ~3,900 MW toward the current 4,429 MW has not been sufficient to clear supply at positive prices, with the market only just reaching $0/MWh as demand recovers. Forecast prices for the next two dispatch intervals (07:00 and 07:30 AEST) sit at -$0.10/MWh and -$0.97 to -$2.83/MWh respectively, confirming that the supply overhang persists through the early morning. Being a Saturday, demand will follow a gentler ramp profile than a weekday — the typical Victorian Saturday peak sits 500–800 MW below a weekday equivalent, which reduces the likelihood of prices rising materially above zero before the afternoon.

For the remainder of today, the load window data points to the deepest negative pricing expected in the 08:00–10:30 AEST window (midnight to 02:30 UTC), with forecast intervals showing prices between -$34/MWh and -$68/MWh — the lowest values of the day. This aligns with the structural overnight minimum where Saturday demand will again fall toward 3,800–4,000 MW against a generation mix that includes sustained wind and inflexible baseload. A notable demand-side factor from earlier in the trading day was AEMO's activation of a negative settlement residue constraint on the NSW–VIC interconnector (NRM_NSW1_VIC1) between 05:00 and 05:45 AEST, which briefly restricted Victoria's ability to export surplus energy northward and would have amplified local negative pricing during that window. The constraint has since been revoked.

Traders and flexible load operators should note that positive or near-zero prices are likely confined to a narrow window around the mid-morning demand recovery (06:00–09:00 AEST) before the Saturday midday solar contribution begins to rebuild the supply surplus. Demand-side flexibility scheduled into the overnight 08:00–10:30 AEST window captures the most negative forecast prices of the day.