Commodity Demand — QLD1: Thursday 27 August 2026

Queensland spot price sits at $91.64/MWh at 06:30 AEST, with demand at 6,468 MW and climbing through the morning ramp. The overnight trough saw demand bottom near 3,870 MW around 04:00-05:00 AEST, with prices collapsing to near-zero and briefly negative (-$4.09/MWh) as minimum load conditions dragged on the market. That trough-to-morning-ramp swing illustrates just how tightly QLD price tracks demand at the margin: a roughly 2,600 MW lift from the 04:30 low to the current level has taken price from single digits to over $90/MWh.

The sharpest demand-price sensitivity showed up yesterday evening. As demand climbed from 6,700 MW toward the evening peak, prices spiked to $284.21/MWh at 20:35 on the 26th, before falling away sharply as demand eased below 6,000 MW overnight — dropping to $6.87/MWh within two hours. That pattern points to a steep segment of the supply curve somewhere in the 6,700-7,500 MW band, where generation dispatch tightens noticeably. Today's data confirms this: as demand pushed past 7,000 MW yesterday between 07:00 and 08:30 AEST, prices ran consistently in the $120-180/MWh range, peaking at $185.25/MWh at 12:25 when demand hit 6,620 MW alongside a midday demand plateau.

For today's trajectory, AEMO's forecast curve shows prices easing to $78.52/MWh by 21:00 AEST tonight, then falling through single digits and into negative territory ($-6 to $-7/MWh) between 00:00 and 06:00 AEST tomorrow as overnight demand troughs again. The forecast then shows a sharp re-ramp from $39.34/MWh at 06:30 to $106-123/MWh through the 08:00-09:30 AEST window tomorrow — consistent with the same morning ramp pattern seen today. Peak demand periods (typically 07:00-09:00 and again in the early evening) remain the key price risk windows; demand above roughly 7,000 MW has consistently produced prices above $100/MWh in this data set, while sub-5,000 MW overnight demand corresponds with prices at or below $25/MWh.

On the supply side, generation mix at 20:30 AEST shows black coal carrying 5,899 MW of the 7,449 MW total generation, with wind contributing 542 MW, batteries 615 MW, and gas OCGT 315 MW filling shoulder demand. Renewable penetration sits at just 10% currently, with carbon intensity at 0.78 tCO2/MWh, reflecting the low-wind, no-solar overnight-to-morning window (wind potential just 0.4 in current weather data). No demand-side AEMO notices specific to QLD are active today — the relevant intervention and system strength notices in the log pertain to SA voltage management and NQLD constraint equation updates, not demand-response actions. Grid stress score sits at 67.8, consistent with the current mid-morning ramp into today's first price peak.