Commodity Demand — TAS1: Sunday 2 August 2026
Tasmania spot price sits at $30.57/MWh at 06:30 AEST, with demand at 1,170 MW — up from an overnight trough near 930-940 MW around 13:00-14:00 AEST (03:00-04:00 local pre-dawn) when prices fell as low as -$15.01/MWh. The overnight period saw sustained negative pricing for roughly five hours as demand stayed below 1,000 MW, confirming Tasmania's typical pattern of oversupply relative to load during low-demand troughs, driven by strong hydro output.
Price sensitivity to demand is pronounced through the morning ramp: as demand climbed from 970 MW to a local peak of 1,281 MW between 06:00 and 08:55 AEST, prices jumped from near-zero/negative territory to a range of $30-57/MWh, spiking briefly to $56.79/MWh at 07:00 AEST. This morning peak coincided with the load-following ramp as generation shifted to meet rising demand, with GAS_OCGT (124 MW) supplementing HYDRO (912 MW) and WIND (272 MW) at the margin. Current generation mix shows 90.49% renewable penetration and carbon intensity of 0.0618 tCO2/MWh, though intensity peaked near 0.147 tCO2/MWh during the overnight trough when hydro's renewable share dropped to around 77%.
AEMO's forecast trajectory points to a much sharper price escalation ahead: forecast RRP climbs from $9.18/MWh at 07:00 AEST to a peak of $89.07/MWh at 09:30 AEST, before easing to the $30-60/MWh band through midday and afternoon, with a secondary evening lift toward $31-32/MWh by 18:00 AEST. This morning peak forecast is materially higher than today's actual morning peak already observed, suggesting tightening conditions — likely linked to the active credible contingency reclassifications on the Sheffield-George Town 220kV and Ulverstone-Emu Bay/Sheffield-Paloona-Ulverstone 110kV lines (both reclassified overnight due to lightning), which invoke the T-V-MNSP1 interconnector constraint set and could compress Basslink transfer capacity during the demand ramp.
Demand-side load-shifting signals confirm the overnight window as the low-cost opportunity: AEMO's load window data shows six one-hour blocks between 02:00-07:00 AEST averaging -$1.14 to $9.68/MWh, offering $79-91/MWh savings versus peak pricing — but with today's demand already through that trough and climbing into the 1,200+ MW morning band, that window has closed for today's dispatch and the next opportunity falls in tonight's post-peak trough after 20:00 AEST.