Commodity Demand — QLD1: Monday 24 August 2026
Queensland spot price sits at $84.53/MWh at 06:30 AEST (settlement 20:30 UTC), with demand at 6,588 MW and climbing through the morning ramp. Overnight demand troughed near 4,800-4,900 MW between 03:00-04:00 AEST, coinciding with prices collapsing to $0-7/MWh and briefly negative (-$7.01/MWh at 03:45 AEST) as wind generation (currently 1,581 MW) covered baseload. The overnight numbers confirm strong price sensitivity to demand in this region: each 1,000 MW swing in demand through the morning ramp has moved price by roughly $60-80/MWh, with the sharpest gradient between 6,600 MW and 7,600 MW, where price jumped from $85 to $103/MWh in about 90 minutes as the morning peak built.
Demand peaked at 7,679 MW around 08:30 AEST, driving the session high of $103.15/MWh shortly before. This morning peak reflects typical Tuesday commercial and industrial load build combined with residual overnight heating demand — cool overnight temperatures (13°C, heating demand score of 5) are pushing early load higher than a mild-weather profile would suggest. Price eased back through the middle of the day as demand fell to a low-6,000 MW range (~13:00-15:00 AEST) despite solar output remaining negligible (only 3.4 MW registered in the generation mix, reflecting current heavy cloud cover of 100%).
The forecast trajectory points to a second, sharper demand-driven price event this evening and into tomorrow's morning peak. AEMO's forward curve shows prices holding in the $65-85/MWh band through today's evening peak (17:00-20:00 AEST), consistent with current settlement of $84.53/MWh, before falling toward $7-25/MWh overnight as demand drops back below 5,000 MW. The steepest forecast move is tomorrow's morning ramp: prices are projected to climb from $54.73/MWh at 15:00 UTC (01:00 AEST 26 Aug) to a forecast peak of $114.71/MWh at 09:00 UTC (19:00 AEST), mirroring today's pattern where demand growth into the high-7,000 MW range pushed price above $100/MWh. Black coal is currently supplying 5,462 MW (83% of dispatched generation), with battery storage contributing 188 MW — both will be key swing capacity as demand climbs toward this afternoon's evening peak.
No demand-side market notices are active for Queensland today; the listed AEMO notices relate to SA voltage direction events, NSW network outages, and TAS contingency reclassifications, none of which affect QLD dispatch or constraint settings this session.