commodity demand sa — SA1
South Australia's spot price sits at $103.44/MWh with demand at 1,355 MW as of 06:35 AEST — a moderate evening load level that has pulled back from the day's peak of approximately 1,705 MW reached around 19:10–19:40 AEST. The price-demand relationship today has been pronounced: as demand climbed through the morning from near zero (literally sub-zero prices during the 10:30–15:30 AEST overnight trough, where demand bottomed below 250 MW and prices hit as low as -$30.76/MWh) into the business day, prices escalated sharply, with spot repeatedly spiking to $300–$370/MWh during the 18:00–19:30 AEST window when demand was running at 1,620–1,705 MW. That mid-morning peak period saw gas-fired generation — 228 MW CCGT and 98 MW OCGT — carrying the bulk of thermal dispatch, with renewables at 38% contributing 201 MW wind and zero solar at the current evening interval.
Demand is now trending gently upward from a 06:05 AEST trough of 1,236 MW, recovering through the 1,300–1,360 MW range. The price response has been proportionate: the $103.44/MWh current price reflects a supply stack where the marginal unit is being called at mid-range gas dispatch cost, with wind at 201 MW providing partial offset but insufficient to suppress prices to the near-zero levels seen during the pre-dawn oversupply period. The generation mix's carbon intensity has improved to 0.3326 tCO2/MWh at 06:30 AEST, down from a peak of 0.488 tCO2/MWh at 21:30 AEST when renewables penetration fell to just 10%.
Forward forecasts for the 07:00–07:30 AEST (21:00–21:30 UTC) period show prices clustering in the $125–$170/MWh range, consistent with modest demand growth as the evening progresses. The load window data points to negative or near-zero prices returning from approximately 09:00–12:00 AEST tonight (23:00–02:00 UTC) as overnight demand retreats and wind output is expected to maintain or increase — a pattern directly mirroring today's deep negative price troughs. Flexible loads with exposure to spot prices face a clear incentive to shift consumption into the post-midnight window, where forecast prices range from -$34/MWh to low single digits across multiple model runs.
No market notices directly affect SA generation or network capacity today. The Victorian lightning-related contingency reclassifications on the Eildon–Mt Beauty 220 kV lines (now cancelled) and the Yallourn–Rowville lines posed potential interconnector constraint risks to SA import capability earlier in the trading day but did not result in binding constraint sets on the SA1 region. The near-term price outlook for SA remains elevated in the $125–$170/MWh band through the next two to three dispatch intervals before demand softens into the overnight trough.