Commodity Demand — VIC1: Saturday 29 August 2026

Victoria's spot price sits at $73.73/MWh at 06:30 AEST, with demand at 4,980 MW and climbing out of the overnight trough. The 24-hour trend shows a textbook demand-price relationship: demand bottomed near 3,168 MW around 04:30 AEST, coinciding with negative prices as low as -$33.92/MWh, before rising through the morning ramp. Yesterday's equivalent morning peak saw demand hit 6,523 MW by 08:45 AEST, dragging prices to $90-96/MWh as brown coal (currently 4,385 MW, the dominant source) and limited flexible capacity struggled to keep pace with the ramp rate.

Today's forecast trajectory points to a repeat pattern with sharper upside. AEMO's price forecast has the evening peak (07:00-11:00 AEST target window) climbing from $26.80/MWh at 07:00 AEST to $105-114/MWh through the 08:00-11:00 AEST block, peaking near $113.94/MWh around 11:00 AEST. This mirrors yesterday's demand-driven price escalation, where each 500 MW of demand growth through the morning ramp added roughly $10-15/MWh to spot prices. The overnight price collapse (sub-zero readings persisting from 02:00-05:00 AEST) reflects minimum demand conditions with wind at 628 MW providing the bulk of renewable output against a demand floor around 3,200-3,400 MW.

Demand-side risk today centres on the temperature profile: current conditions show 8.8°C with heating demand at 9.2 (on the reported scale) and negligible solar potential (cloud cover 82%), suggesting morning heating load is supporting the ramp. AEMO's minimum system load notices for SA (not VIC) flag broader NEM-wide low-demand sensitivity during the 12:00-15:00 AEST window today, with SA operational demand forecast to approach -62 MW at 14:00 AEST — this dynamic typically also softens VIC midday pricing via interconnector flows, consistent with the forecast pulling back to $90.50/MWh by 13:00-13:30 AEST before a second smaller lift into the evening peak ($79-82/MWh forecast for 16:00-18:00 AEST).

For trading desks, the key sensitivity is the 08:00-11:00 AEST window, where forecast prices exceed $100/MWh on demand approaching 6,400-6,500 MW — a level that saturates brown coal baseload and pulls on gas and battery dispatch (battery currently contributing 103.52 MW). Price stability score sits at 28.7, reflecting the wide overnight-to-peak swing (-$34 to potentially $114/MWh), so intraday hedging should account for this volatility band rather than a single reference price.