Commodity Demand — QLD1: Thursday 3 September 2026
Queensland spot price sits at $246.61/MWh as at 20:30 AEST, on demand of 6,148 MW — a sharp evening ramp that has pushed prices from double digits at midday to the $150-250/MWh band inside the last 90 minutes. The 20:00-20:30 window alone saw price climb from $152.60 to $246.61/MWh while demand only moved from 6,050 MW to 6,148 MW, underscoring how thin the margin is at this time of night: with solar output falling away, each additional 100 MW of demand is now being met by higher-cost black coal and gas peaking capacity, and the market is pricing that marginal tightness accordingly.
The intraday demand trajectory today has been the classic Queensland shape: overnight demand troughed near 3,600-3,750 MW between 01:00 and 03:00 AEST, coinciding with negative prices as low as -$35/MWh as rooftop and grid solar combined with must-run baseload to oversupply the region. Demand then climbed steadily through the morning to a daytime peak around 7,400-7,500 MW between 08:00 and 09:30 AEST, holding prices in the $90-130/MWh range as coal and gas ramped to cover the shortfall left by fading overnight wind. A secondary trough appeared mid-afternoon (5,400-5,700 MW, prices $70-100/MWh) as rooftop solar peaked, before the current evening ramp back above 6,100 MW as solar exits and residential load returns.
AEMO's own dispatch forecast points to a further price spike to $222/MWh at 21:00 AEST before collapsing to near zero by 22:00 and turning negative (-$5 to -$8/MWh) from 23:00 through to 06:00 AEST tomorrow — consistent with the low-demand overnight trough pattern seen last night. Forecast prices then recover to $70-85/MWh through tomorrow morning's ramp, well below today's peak, suggesting today's evening spike is a short, sharp demand-driven event rather than a sustained tightening. Generation mix at 20:25 AEST shows black coal supplying 5,764 MW (85% of the 6,760 MW mix), with wind at 537 MW and battery discharging 581 MW into the evening peak; renewable penetration has fallen to 19.3% and carbon intensity has risen to 0.707 tCO2/MWh as solar drops out. No demand-side market notices are in effect for QLD1 today — the only non-conformance and intervention activity in the notice log relates to NSW1, SA1 and TAS1, so today's price volatility is a straightforward function of the demand ramp against a coal-heavy generation stack, not an external constraint.