Commodity Demand — NSW1: Friday 24 April 2026

NSW spot price sits at $69.29/MWh with total demand at 6,685 MW as of the 06:30 AEST interval — a Saturday morning profile consistent with reduced commercial and industrial load. The demand trajectory over the past several hours tells the day's story clearly: the overnight trough bottomed near 6,000 MW around 11:00–11:30 AEST, with prices drifting as low as $2–5/MWh during those sub-6,100 MW intervals. The morning build has since added roughly 685 MW back onto the system, and the current $69/MWh price reflects the market pricing in that incremental demand rather than any supply tightness — black coal is carrying 4,552 MW of the load with wind and solar contributing a combined 290 MW.

The price-to-demand relationship across today's data is instructive. When demand sat between 6,000–6,300 MW in the early hours, prices clustered in the $22–40/MWh band. As demand climbed through 6,500–6,700 MW from around 05:00 AEST onward, prices stepped into the $65–70/MWh range, indicating a supply stack inflection point at roughly that demand level where higher-cost plant is being dispatched to the margin. The sensitivity sharpens considerably above 8,000 MW — during the 17:30–19:00 AEST window earlier today demand was sitting in the 7,700–8,800 MW range and prices were consistently holding $76–85/MWh, with brief spikes to $91–93/MWh at the 8,300+ MW peak around 18:30–19:30 AEST.

For today's outlook, the demand trajectory is already unwinding from the overnight shoulder. Being Saturday and Anzac Day, commercial load uplift through the morning will be subdued relative to a normal weekday. Forecast data for the 07:00 AEST interval (21:00 UTC) points to prices in the $60–66/MWh range, consistent with demand remaining in the 6,500–7,000 MW band through mid-morning. The load windows data signals that the overnight period from 08:00 AEST onward is forecast to carry prices into negative territory — as low as minus $25/MWh in some intervals around 11:30–13:00 AEST — driven by low Saturday demand coinciding with the solar generation ramp. Traders and flexible load operators should note this window as a high-confidence price trough.

There are no market notices directly affecting NSW supply today. The active notices relate to the Mudgeeraba–Terranora 110 kV line reclassification in QLD1 due to lightning activity — currently active again as of 04:09 AEST — though no constraint sets are invoked and no NSW price impact has been flagged. A series of manifestly incorrect inputs reviews covering the 15:00–17:40 AEST intervals have been resolved with prices confirmed unchanged, so the historical record is clean for those periods. The demand-side picture for today is straightforward: a holiday Saturday with low heating demand (4.1 kW equivalent at 13.9°C, minimal cooling load) and near-zero solar potential in the current interval pointing to continued moderate overnight demand before the morning ramp resumes.