Commodity Demand — SA1: Monday 22 June 2026
South Australia's spot price sits at $230/MWh with demand at 1,698 MW as of 06:30 AEST, well below the morning peak that pushed demand to 2,397 MW and prices to $491/MWh in the 18:25–18:30 AEST window. The day's demand trajectory followed a textbook winter weekday profile — a pre-dawn trough around 1,425 MW (11:05 AEST overnight) giving way to a sustained morning peak above 2,300 MW from roughly 17:30–19:00 AEST, where prices oscillated between $299–$491/MWh. Notably, the morning ramp was briefly complicated by a Murraylink planned outage (active from 22:30 AEST), which constrains the SA–VIC interconnector and reduces SA's access to import capacity precisely when demand is climbing. Negative settlement residue constraints on the SA-to-VIC directional flow (NRM_SA1_VIC1) were invoked and revoked multiple times across the morning hours, indicating tight interconnector conditions during the demand peak that amplified price sensitivity.
The price–demand relationship today shows clear non-linearity at the demand thresholds that matter for SA's relatively thin supply stack. Prices held in the $227–$312/MWh band through mid-morning demand of 2,200–2,400 MW, but the generation mix — currently 543 MW gas OCGT, 531 MW gas CCGT, 176 MW wind, and 70 MW battery at 0.4643 tCO2/MWh — leaves little headroom without interconnector support. Wind output at 176 MW represents only modest contribution given the 1.1/10 wind potential score, and solar is zero in these winter pre-dawn hours. With Murraylink constrained, marginal price formation in SA depends heavily on gas peakers, explaining the $491–$875/MWh spikes that punctuated the morning.
The forward forecast is materially more expensive than today's realised morning prices. AEMO's price forecast (issued 06:01 AEST) projects a $160–$221/MWh window through 07:00–08:30 AEST before rising sharply: $338/MWh at 09:00 AEST, $497/MWh at 09:30 AEST, and sustained $497–$875/MWh pricing from 12:30 AEST through 04:00 AEST tomorrow. Two standout intervals are 16:30 AEST ($844/MWh) and 23:30–24:00 AEST ($875–$899/MWh), coinciding with the expected evening demand ramp into winter peak territory and overnight periods where interconnector capacity and wind generation will again be the key variables. The best load shifting window today is the next 1–2 hours (07:00–08:00 AEST, forecast $160–$180/MWh) before the market firms significantly.
Demand-side managers should note today's grid stress score of 62.6/100 and price stability score of 0/100 — the latter reflecting the extreme volatility already seen, with prices ranging from $140/MWh to $20,300/MWh across the past 24 hours. The $20,300/MWh cap-price event between 21:20–22: