Cold weather drives electricity ‘Market Demand’ higher (and higher than AEMO’s earlier forecasts)

There’s been commentary about the cold weather and electricity demand in several forums

1)   including an article by Felix Levesque on Wednesday 25th June 2025 that seems to have different focuses at different domains:

(a)  as a Weatherzone article ‘Polar blast sends shivers across southeast Australia’ at 09:57 it does not mention electricity demand

(b)  as a DTN article ‘Polar blast brings high energy demand to southeast Australia’ at 10:13 it adds some content at the bottom – including the comment:

‘Increased energy demand across the National Electricity Market (NEM) is expected with this blast of cold air, especially on Thursday as the chilly conditions spread into eastern NSW.’

… not sure I understand the split personalities?

2)  and also, shortly after posting this, we see AEMO’s note on Linkedin here that notes:

‘Yesterday evening, Victoria recorded a new winter maximum operational demand of 8,818 MW at 6:00pm (AEST), driven by cold temperatures and wet and windy weather conditions across the state. ‘

… for those unfamiliar, AEMO typically talks about ‘Operational Demand’  whereas we more often speak of ‘Market Demand’. (both valid measures for different purposes.

So I thought it would be worth adding a couple snapshots from the ‘Forecast Convergence’ widget in ez2view looking at ‘Market Demand’ as at various dispatch intervals on Thursday 26th June 2025 looking backwards ~7 days and forwards ~7 days:

NEM-wide demand, at 14:55

In this first snapshot, we see NEM-wide ‘Market Demand’ with the snapshot at 14:55 (NEM time).

Ordinarily I would use the ‘Grid View’ in order to allow users to ‘look up a vertical’ in order to see ‘that other dimension of time’ … but on this occasion a chart view works quite well.

In this image I’ve highlighted a few evening periods, as follows:

1)  Historically

(a)  For Sunday 22nd June 2025 we see demand higher than earlier forecasts

(b)  For Tuesday 24th June 2025 we see demand was higher than preceding days, and above 30,000MW

(c)  For yesterday (Wednesday 25th June 2025) we see the demand was highest thus far in the 7-day period … and also considerably higher than* the earlier AEMO P30 and ST PASA forecasts.

2)  Still in the forecast window:

(a)  We see forecast NEM-wide ‘Market Demand’ for this evening (Thursday 26th June 2025 ) shows the forecasts progressively ratcheting upwards, at this point.

Victorian demand, at 15:10

In this second snapshot, we see Victorian ‘Market Demand’ with the snapshot at 15:10 (NEM time).

Particularly for Tuesday 24th June 2025 and Wednesday 25th June 2025, we appear to* see clear daylight between the AEMO’s earlier forecasts and what the ‘actual demand’ ended up being.

(*)  … readers should keep in mind that part of this will relate to our current implementation (in ‘Forecast Convergence’ widget) to reflect the limitations in the AEMO data of Tripwire #1 and Tripwire #2 stemming from the implementation of Five Minute Settlement.