Commodity Demand — VIC1: Tuesday 14 April 2026

Victoria's spot price sits at $81.31/MWh with demand at 5,217 MW as of 06:35 AEST, a marked easing from the day's demand peak of 6,447 MW reached around 19:15 AEST, which coincided with prices pushing into the $150–$260/MWh range through the morning and late-morning period. The price-demand relationship today has been tightly coupled: as demand climbed from an overnight trough near 4,895 MW (where prices settled in the $35/MWh range) through the morning ramp, prices tracked upward in near-lockstep, breaching $200/MWh on multiple intervals between 20:05 and 21:10 AEST (19:05–20:10 UTC) when demand held above 6,200 MW. The intraday high of $261/MWh at 21:50 AEST corresponded to demand of 5,885 MW on the downward slope, suggesting supply-side tightness rather than pure demand pressure at that point.

Demand is now climbing again through the early evening ramp. From a low of approximately 4,222 MW around 04:00–04:30 AEST — the daily trough — demand has risen steadily to 5,217 MW and the trajectory is upward. The most recent forecasts for the 07:00 AEST half-hour (21:00 UTC) target price at $85.83/MWh, consistent with demand building toward the evening peak. Forecasts for 07:30 AEST (21:30 UTC) sit in the $62–$77/MWh range, suggesting the dispatch engine expects demand to plateau or ease slightly before the next step up. The 08:00 AEST (22:00 UTC) window shows forecast prices as low as $19–$35/MWh across multiple forecast runs, which is at odds with the demand trajectory unless overnight demand softening is expected to arrive earlier than the current ramp suggests — traders should watch this spread carefully.

The generation mix context is relevant to price sensitivity: brown coal is running at 2,062 MW, wind at 581 MW, and gas OCGT at 109 MW, with solar at zero given the hour. Renewables sit at 21.4% of the mix at 0.9359 tCO2/MWh carbon intensity. With solar unavailable and wind output modest relative to total demand, any demand spike in the next two to three hours will compete for thermal capacity on the upper end of the dispatch stack, which explains the elevated price forecasts in the $100–$110/MWh range for the 08:00–09:30 AEST window seen in earlier forecast runs. AEMO's grid stress score of 77.1 reinforces that the system is not operating with significant headroom at current demand levels.

Demand-side traders should note the sharp price cliff forecast for the 08:00–09:00 AEST (22:00–23:00 UTC) window, where multiple forecast runs point to prices between $8.95 and $35/MWh — well below the current spot. If the evening ramp follows the same trajectory as today's morning peak, demand could again test the 5,500–5,800 MW range before easing toward midnight, and price spikes above $100/MWh are plausible on any supply constraint or demand overshoot. Flexible load with the ability