Commodity Demand — QLD1: Tuesday 18 August 2026
Queensland spot price sits at $59.90/MWh at 06:30 AEST, with demand at 6,744 MW and climbing through the evening peak shoulder. The region has just come off a sharp overnight trough — demand bottomed near 4,700 MW around 10:30-11:00pm AEST last night, dragging price to near zero and briefly negative (-$1.31/MWh at 05:15 UTC / 3:15pm AEST yesterday) — before rebuilding steadily overnight and through this morning's ramp.
The price-demand relationship today is pronounced. Overnight, as demand fell below 5,000 MW, prices held in single digits and touched negative territory multiple times. As demand rebuilt through the 6-8am AEST ramp, climbing from ~6,400 MW to a session high of 7,908 MW at 08:30 AEST, prices jumped in step, peaking at $85.15/MWh at 11:40am AEST when demand was still elevated near 7,020 MW. Since midday, demand has eased back from the 7,900 MW morning peak toward the current 6,744 MW, and price has correspondingly softened from the $80s into the high $50s/low $60s range, though the current 20:30 interval shows renewed upward pressure as evening demand builds again.
AEMO's forecast points to a firmer demand and price trajectory ahead. Forecast RRP climbs from $57 at 21:00 AEST tonight to a peak of $91.69 at 8:00pm AEST tomorrow (10:00 UTC target), with demand-driven price strength building through tomorrow's morning peak — forecasts show $81-86/MWh across 8-9am and above $88/MWh into late morning. Overnight tonight, forecast prices turn negative from 10pm AEST through to around 3pm AEST tomorrow (troughing near -$7.25/MWh), consistent with the low-demand overnight pattern already observed. Load-shifting windows tonight and into the early hours offer savings of $94-99/MWh versus peak pricing, reflecting this demand-driven price spread.
On the demand side, a non-credible contingency event tripped the Braemar No.1 275kV busbar at 13:32 AEST yesterday with no load shedding instructed, and short-notice outages on the Woolooga-Teebar Creek 275kV line and Palmwoods-South Pine 275kV line (now restored) have shaped interconnector flows with NSW this week. Current carbon intensity sits at 0.6723 tCO2/MWh with renewable penetration at 23.22%, black coal supplying 5,331 MW and wind 1,329 MW of the current 7,078 MW generation mix — intensity has climbed from the overnight low of 0.41 tCO2/MWh as coal's share of the mix increased with demand.