Commodity Demand — VIC1: Saturday 1 August 2026
Victoria's spot price sits at -$1.15/MWh at 06:30 AEST with demand at 5228 MW, continuing a stretch of negative-to-flat pricing that has persisted since roughly 18:45 AEST yesterday evening. This overnight softness reflects strong wind output (3102 MW, over 59% of current generation) combined with low overnight demand, pushing brown coal (3246 MW) and wind to cover load with minimal thermal flexing needed.
Demand has swung sharply over the past 24 hours, ranging from a trough of 3763 MW around 04:15 AEST to a peak of 7300 MW at 08:30 AEST yesterday's equivalent morning period. Price sensitivity to demand is pronounced through this range: intervals above 7000 MW consistently cleared in the $75-100/MWh band, while sub-4000 MW troughs drove prices to -$5 to -$13/MWh. The 08:00-11:00 AEST window has repeatedly shown the strongest demand-price correlation, with 7200+ MW readings tracking $75-92/MWh.
For today's trajectory, AEMO's forecast curve points to a continued low-price regime, with forecast RRP running from $0.15/MWh at 07:00 AEST down to deeply negative territory overnight — troughing near -$64/MWh around 04:30 AEST tomorrow. Confirmed low-price windows include -$34/MWh (02:30-03:30 AEST) and -$62/MWh (04:00-05:00 AEST), both flagged as low-risk, zero-carbon-intensity periods given wind contribution. Expect the morning demand ramp (06:00-09:00 AEST) to again push prices into the $70-90/MWh range as it did yesterday, before easing through midday and into a negative overnight trough consistent with the forecast curve.
On demand-side factors, no load-shedding directions or demand-response notices are active for VIC today. The relevant market notices are transmission-related: a short-notice outage of the SYTS MLTS 2 line/SMTS 2 line circuit breaker (from 17:15 AEST yesterday) has invoked the V-SY_CB constraint set affecting Vic-NSW and Vic-SA interconnector flows, which traders should watch as a potential price volatility driver during today's demand ramps given reduced transfer capacity.