Commodity Demand — VIC1 — Tuesday 28 April 2026

Victoria's spot price sits at $92.36/MWh with demand at 5,259 MW at 06:30 AEST, and climbing. The price trajectory over the past hour tells the story clearly: demand has risen from 4,799 MW at 06:00 AEST to the current level — a 460 MW lift in 30 minutes — with prices tracking from $79.50/MWh to $92.36/MWh over the same window. This demand-price correlation is tight and consistent with the autumn morning ramp, where reduced solar input and rising heating loads (the weather data shows 100% cloud cover, 13.4°C, and a heating demand index of 4.6) combine to put pressure on dispatchable capacity.

Today's price history reveals an archetypal autumn demand curve. Demand troughed around 3,612 MW at approximately 11:05 AEST overnight before recovering sharply through the morning ramp. The earlier morning peak — reaching 6,413 MW at 08:10 AEST — drove prices into the $110–$124/MWh range, with the intraday high of $123.90/MWh recorded at 08:35 AEST. Prices then eased as demand retreated through midday to a base around 4,200–4,300 MW, with spot settling in the low-to-mid $70s/MWh across the 03:00–04:00 AEST window. The current 06:30 AEST reading at $92.36/MWh confirms the evening ramp is firmly underway.

Forecasts for the 07:00 AEST half-hour (21:00 UTC) are consistently clustering around $91–$93/MWh across multiple runs, suggesting the market sees current conditions as broadly stable for the next 30 minutes. However, the 07:30 AEST (21:30 UTC) forecast half-hour is more divergent — most runs sit in the $96–$98/MWh range, with one outlier at $123.69/MWh — indicating elevated uncertainty as demand continues to build. The morning peak period between 08:00 and 09:00 AEST is where price risk concentrates; the data shows this window produced the day's highest sustained prices, and with 100% cloud cover suppressing rooftop solar output and heating demand active, a repeat of $110–$125/MWh intervals is plausible if demand tracks above 6,200 MW again.

Load-shifting opportunity is pronounced today. The load window data points to a very deep overnight trough window from 08:30–10:30 AEST (22:30–00:30 UTC) where forecast prices drop to single digits and into negative territory, with savings of $150–$185/MWh relative to current prices. Flexible industrial loads and battery operators should note this window as the primary arbitrage opportunity against the morning peak. Carbon intensity at 1.1145 tCO2/MWh and a renewable penetration of just 6.56% at this interval — compared to 40%+ overnight when wind was stronger and demand lower — reflect the structural shift that accompanies the demand ramp: as dispatchable thermal capacity is increasingly called upon to meet morning load, both price and emissions intensity rise in tandem.