Commodity Demand — QLD1 — Tuesday 28 April 2026

Queensland spot price sits at $84.73/MWh with demand at 6,551 MW at 06:30 AEST, climbing through the morning ramp. The price-demand relationship across today's session has been tight and consistent: demand peaked near 7,890 MW around 18:05–18:10 AEST with prices holding in the $85–$92/MWh range, then tracked lower as demand shed through the afternoon and evening. The $64–$65/MWh price floor, which held with remarkable persistence across the 15:00–19:00 AEST window as demand sat in the 5,560–5,770 MW range, reflects the underlying thermal stack cost at mid-merit load levels. The evening ramp from roughly 05:00 AEST has demand rising from around 5,600 MW back toward the 6,500+ MW range, pushing price from the mid-$60s back up through $80/MWh.

Forecast RRPs for the 07:00 and 07:30 AEST half-hours are clustered tightly at $82.50/MWh across multiple dispatch runs, suggesting the market sees demand continuing to build but without sufficient tightening to drive prices meaningfully above today's morning peak. The overnight period tells the rest of the demand story: demand bottomed near 4,820 MW around 10:15 AEST (UTC+10 equivalent), with prices at or near zero for extended intervals — a direct consequence of supply comfortably exceeding demand with no marginal unit willing to set a positive price. That overnight trough was roughly 3,070 MW below the daytime peak, a demand swing of around 39%, which is driving the full arc of today's price profile.

The non-conformance notice for unit MPP_1 in QLD (−35 MW, 19:10–21:10 AEST) represents a modest supply-side perturbation during the evening demand build, though it did not materially disrupt price outcomes given the scale of Queensland's generation stack. Load window data indicates near-term overnight pricing from 08:30 AEST onward is forecast well below current spot, with multiple intervals pricing negative through the early-to-mid morning hours — consistent with demand falling back below 5,000 MW as residential and commercial load drops away. Traders with flexible load have a clear arbitrage window in the 08:30–11:30 AEST range before the next demand ramp reasserts upward price pressure heading into tomorrow's morning peak.