Commodity Demand — VIC1: Friday 19 June 2026
Victoria's spot price sits at $57.48/MWh with demand at 4,978 MW as of 06:30 AEST — a relatively subdued Saturday morning reading that sits well below the day's earlier peak of 7,389 MW recorded around 17:45 AEST Friday. That morning peak drove prices into the $75–$81/MWh band consistently, illustrating how tightly Victoria's marginal pricing responds to demand increments above 7,000 MW. The relationship is clear in today's data: every sustained move above 7,000 MW produced prices in the $70–$81/MWh range, while demand below 5,500 MW — as seen in the overnight trough — was sufficient to pull prices to near-zero or negative territory, with several intervals printing between -$2.02/MWh and -$0.05/MWh.
Demand is now on a typical Saturday morning recovery trajectory, having troughed around 4,396 MW near 03:45 AEST. The forecast price profile indicates a sharp step-up beginning around 07:00–07:30 AEST, with prices forecast at $62.82/MWh for the 07:00 interval and climbing to a $92.11–$92.30/MWh plateau through the 09:00–10:30 AEST window. The midday period sees the forecast peak at $100.27/MWh around 22:30–23:00 AEST (12:30–13:00 AEST local), which aligns with expected residential and commercial heating load on a cold winter Saturday — ambient temperature is currently 11.3°C with 95% cloud cover and effectively zero solar contribution, meaning heating demand carries the full weight on dispatchable generation without any daytime solar offset.
The demand-price sensitivity today reflects a tight supply stack above 6,500 MW. During the Friday morning peak, each 200–300 MW increment in demand above 6,700 MW added roughly $5–$10/MWh to the spot price, with prices holding in a narrow $74–$81/MWh corridor once that threshold was breached. Today's Saturday demand is unlikely to replicate Friday's 7,300+ MW peak — weekend commercial load is structurally lower — but the absence of solar generation across a fully overcast day (cloud cover forecast at 71% for today) removes the midday demand suppression that typically eases afternoon prices in other seasons. The lowest-cost windows for flexible load sit between 13:00–15:00 AEST (forecast $51–$56/MWh), before the morning demand ramp pushes prices back above $75/MWh from 16:00 AEST onward.