Commodity Demand — NSW1: Saturday 15 August 2026

NSW spot price sits at $78.86/MWh at 06:25 AEST with demand at 7,595 MW, easing from the overnight evening peak. The data shows demand has already traced this morning's full winter cycle: overnight demand bottomed near 7,320 MW around 04:20-04:25 AEST, then climbed sharply through the morning ramp to a daily high of 10,008 MW at 08:25 AEST as heating load built through the cold, overcast start (current temperature 11.4°C, 95% cloud cover, near-zero solar and wind potential). Price responded in lockstep, peaking at $109.30/MWh at 08:00 AEST as demand pushed through 9,900-10,000 MW, before easing back to the $85-97/MWh band through mid-morning as demand receded to the 9,000-9,700 MW range.

The demand-price relationship today is clearly convex above roughly 9,000 MW: every 500 MW step above that threshold has added $10-20/MWh to spot price, consistent with higher-cost peaking plant and gas entering the stack. Below 8,500 MW, prices compress into a tight $65-90/MWh band regardless of small demand swings, reflecting ample coal and hydro capacity covering baseload. Through the afternoon, demand has drifted down steadily from the late-morning plateau near 9,000-9,500 MW to 7,100-7,400 MW by early evening, tracking price down to a flat $66.53/MWh floor that held for hours from roughly 16:00 to 19:55 AEST.

AEMO's forecast trajectory points to a modest evening bounce, with forecast RRP lifting from the current $78.86/MWh to $87.85/MWh by 21:00 AEST before falling away sharply overnight — forecasts show sub-$50/MWh prices from 22:00 AEST through to 06:00 AEST tomorrow, bottoming near $24-25/MWh around 00:00 and 02:00 AEST. This overnight trough reflects the seasonal evening peak dissipating without a corresponding morning demand ramp yet showing in the forecast window. Demand-side risk is limited today: no load-shedding, non-conformance, or reserve notices apply to NSW, though an active Directlink control-unavailability notice and a Lismore 132kV line outage remain in force, both feeding into interconnector transfer constraints that could tighten local supply margins if NSW-QLD flows are needed during any late demand surge. Generation mix at 20:25 AEST shows black coal carrying 5,088 MW of the load, with wind (691 MW) and hydro (615 MW) the largest renewable contributors as renewable penetration sits at 21.95% and carbon intensity at 0.686 tCO2/MWh.