Commodity Demand — VIC1: Wednesday 19 August 2026

Victoria spot price sits at $80.67/MWh at 06:25 AEST with demand at 5,917 MW and climbing sharply through the morning ramp — up from 4,741 MW at the overnight low around 17:00 AEST yesterday to a daytime peak of 7,442 MW at 08:25 AEST. That prior peak pushed prices as high as $86.74/MWh in AEMO's own forecast track, and the current 06:25 AEST interval is already retracing the same pattern seen yesterday, where demand crossing 6,500-7,000 MW consistently drove prices from the $25-60/MWh band into the $60-90/MWh range as brown coal (3,898 MW) and gas peaking plant (134 MW OCGT) were dispatched alongside wind (1,367 MW) and battery output (366 MW) to cover the gap.

The demand-price relationship today is highly non-linear above roughly 6,800 MW. Below that threshold, prices hold in the $10-60/MWh band even with meaningful swings in demand (the low-100s to 6,600 MW range through the evening saw prices mostly $50-80/MWh). Once demand pushes past 7,000 MW — as it did yesterday between 07:00 and 10:00 AEST — prices spike into the $60-90/MWh range and briefly touch $78-79/MWh at single dispatch intervals. AEMO's forecast trajectory for today shows this repeating: prices are forecast to climb from $82.94/MWh at 07:00 AEST to a peak of $92.21/MWh around 09:00 AEST, before easing back through the $56-90/MWh band into early afternoon and collapsing to near-zero and negative territory ($0 to -$0.05/MWh) overnight from 14:00 to 15:00 AEST as demand falls away and minimum demand conditions return.

Solar contribution is effectively zero right now (0 MW, pre-dawn) and today's cloud cover forecast of 76% with only 0.9 solar potential rating limits rooftop and grid-scale solar offset during the midday trough, meaning coal and wind carry more of the midday load than a clear-sky day would allow. Wind potential is also modest at 3.1 for the day, tracking the 1,367 MW currently online. Grid stress is elevated at 77.6 on our internal scoring, consistent with the tight demand-supply balance during the morning ramp. No demand-side notices are in effect for VIC today — the active market notices relate to a cancelled non-credible contingency reclassification on the Eildon–Mt Beauty 220kV lines (weather-driven, now resolved) and a NSW interconnector outage that returned to service yesterday evening, neither of which materially constrains Victorian dispatch today. Traders should expect the sharpest price risk in the 07:00-09:00 AEST window as demand crosses the 7,000 MW threshold, easing materially after 14:00 AEST as afternoon demand falls below 5,000 MW.