commodity demand nsw — NSW1

NSW spot price sits at $79/MWh with demand at 6,766 MW as of 06:30 AEST — well down from today's peak of 8,925 MW reached around 18:45 AEST, when prices were sustained in the $77–$92/MWh range throughout the morning and midday periods. The price-demand relationship across today's history is clear: demand above roughly 8,000 MW consistently attracted prices of $77–$92/MWh, with brief spikes to $91.70/MWh during the 23:40–00:15 AEST window when demand was near its daily peak. As demand has unwound through the evening toward the current 6,766 MW, prices have tracked lower, though not as sharply as the demand fall might suggest — indicating the marginal cost stack remains reasonably firm even at these mid-evening levels.

The overnight trajectory is the dominant price story for the next several hours. Demand is on a typical Saturday post-evening decline and is expected to trough in the early hours of Saturday morning, where load window forecasts point to near-zero or negative spot prices between approximately 08:30 and 16:00 AEST — driven by low overnight demand intersecting with baseload generation that has limited ability to back off quickly. Forecasts for the 07:00 AEST interval (21:00 UTC) have been consistently signalling $91–$105/MWh across updates issued throughout the day, suggesting the market anticipated a price recovery as demand begins its Saturday morning climb from the overnight trough.

A network notice remains active regarding an unplanned outage of the Tarrone–Heywood/APD 500 kV line in Victoria, which invoked constraint set V-HYTR affecting the VIC1–NSW1 interconnector. With this constraint still live, NSW's ability to import from or export to Victoria is curtailed, which tightens the effective supply stack available to NSW and adds a modest upward bias to prices relative to an unconstrained network position. Traders should note the Bayswater–Wollar 5A4 500 kV line returned to service this morning, removing constraint set N-BWWO_5A4 and restoring some intra-NSW transfer capacity — a partial offset to the Victorian interconnector restriction.

The actionable price outlook for Saturday 18 April is a deep overnight trough — load windows indicate negative pricing as early as 08:30 AEST through to the mid-morning period — followed by a demand-led recovery toward the morning peak window, where forecasts cluster around $91–$105/MWh. Demand-side participants with flexible load should be positioning to shift consumption into the 08:30–16:00 AEST window. The Victorian network constraint via V-HYTR is the primary upside risk to the morning recovery pricing; its resolution or persistence will directly shape how sharply prices move as Saturday demand builds.