Commodity Demand — QLD1: Friday 29 May 2026

Queensland spot price sits at $92.56/MWh with total demand at 5,732 MW as of 06:30 AEST — a Saturday morning level that reflects the typical weekend residential baseload profile. The demand trajectory over the past 24 hours tells a clear story: the day's price arc bottomed in overnight trade between roughly 01:00–03:00 AEST, where demand troughed near 4,650–4,800 MW and spot prices compressed into the high $30s–low $40s/MWh, with one interval printing $0.01/MWh at 12:40 AEST (UTC+10). From that trough, demand has climbed steadily through the early morning ramp — rising from around 4,700 MW at 11:00 AEST to 5,733 MW now — and prices have responded directly, moving from sub-$40/MWh to the low-to-mid $90s/MWh range. The correlation is tight: each ~500 MW step up in demand over the morning ramp has been accompanied by a $15–25/MWh lift in the spot price, reflecting Queensland's relatively steep supply stack in the 5,000–6,000 MW demand band.

Today's demand is tracking materially lower than the equivalent morning period on Friday 29 May, when demand at this time of day was running above 6,500 MW with prices consistently in the $100–108/MWh range. The Saturday discount is already worth roughly $15–20/MWh at the current level. Looking at the day ahead, Saturday demand is unlikely to replicate Friday's 7,400 MW intraday peak — a mild 15°C morning in Brisbane with clear skies (cloud cover 7%) and a forecast maximum of 20.2°C eliminates both cooling and significant heating load, keeping residential demand subdued. The current forecast for the 07:00 AEST (21:00 UTC) interval is $103.97/MWh, pointing to a late-morning demand build toward the 6,000–6,500 MW range driving a modest price step-up, before the afternoon solar contribution pushes demand net of rooftop PV lower and prices ease back toward the $70–80/MWh range.

The generation mix at 06:30 AEST has black coal carrying 4,253 MW, wind contributing 966 MW, batteries dispatching 294 MW, gas OCGT at 147 MW, and hydro at 137 MW, with solar negligible at this pre-dawn hour. As sunrise progresses and rooftop solar output builds — forecast solar potential is strong today at 25.6 average across the day — effective demand on the grid will be suppressed through the midday period, likely pulling prices back toward the $70–85/MWh range seen across yesterday's afternoon. The load window data reinforces this: forecast intervals from 08:00 AEST onward show overnight prices collapsing again toward negative territory, consistent with the pattern of wind and solar surplus displacing thermal generation in the sub-5,000 MW demand environment expected after midnight tonight. The key price risk to watch today is the late-morning demand ramp between 07:00–10:00 AEST if cooler temperatures lift heating load faster than anticipated — at current market depth, each additional 300–400 MW of demand in that band is worth approximately $10–15/MWh at the margin.