Commodity Demand — TAS1 — Tuesday 28 April 2026

Tasmania sits at 1,155.85 MW and $97.07/MWh as of 06:30 AEST, with demand climbing steadily through the past hour from 1,088 MW at 06:00 AEST. This upward trajectory follows the region's classic morning ramp profile: demand troughed near 950 MW through the mid-afternoon lull (around 00:30–02:00 AEST) before the evening residential load build commenced around 05:30 AEST, pushing prices from the $88–96/MWh band that dominated overnight into the current $97/MWh level. The relationship between demand and price is tight in today's data — prices held in the $88–96/MWh range while demand sat below ~1,100 MW, then stepped up to the $96–97/MWh tier as demand crossed that threshold. The session's sharpest price event was a brief spike to $151–156/MWh around 04:05–04:15 AEST at roughly 982–987 MW, indicating an interval-level supply constraint unrelated to gross demand — likely a generation or interconnector dispatch issue that self-resolved within 20 minutes.

The day's demand peak has already been established in this dataset: 1,256 MW at approximately 03:55 AEST (17:55 local time on the 28th), which corresponded with a sustained price plateau of $106/MWh that ran from around 17:00 to 09:00 AEST. That $106/MWh level represents a clear price tier in Tasmania's dispatch stack — prices locked to that band for over two hours as demand held above 1,190 MW. The step-down from $106 to $96/MWh occurred as demand fell back below ~1,185 MW around 09:30 AEST, confirming a relatively discrete pricing threshold in the current supply stack.

Forward forecasts peg the next dispatch intervals at $96.12/MWh through at least 07:00–09:00 AEST, consistent with demand continuing its morning build but not yet threatening the $106/MWh tier. Forecast demand values in the dataset return zero (a data limitation), but based on the observed intraday pattern, demand is likely to build toward a morning peak of 1,150–1,250 MW between 08:00 and 10:00 AEST as heating load intensifies — today's 7.6°C temperature and 10.4 heating degree units support that expectation. If demand clears 1,185–1,200 MW again, the $106/MWh price tier comes back into play. Overnight and early-hours forecasts had pencilled in $140–165/MWh for the 07:00 AEST period before being revised sharply downward to $96.12/MWh from around 14:00 AEST onwards, suggesting AEMO's pre-dispatch settled on a materially less constrained supply outlook than initial runs implied.