After a long period with little visible product innovation, the NEM’s contract market has quietly and slowly started evolving. Non-traditional hedging instruments have been emerging in the OTC market for several years, and in mid-2025 ASX Energy attempted to add/respond to that momentum with the launch of new Morning Peak and Evening Peak electricity futures. Last year’s Nelson Review raised the prospect that further contract innovation may still be yet to come.

Below, we’ll take a very quick look at traded volumes for ASX Energy’s two new futures products since they were launched around eight months ago.

The new contracts

The two new products are Morning Peak and Evening Peak electricity quarterly futures, listed across NSW, QLD, VIC, and SA. Strip variants are also available, bundling consecutive quarters into a single contract rather than requiring each to be traded individually.

The Morning Peak contract covers 6am to 9am (NEM time) and the Evening Peak covers 4pm to 9pm (NEM time) — each Monday to Sunday over the quarter.

Trading for the new products commenced in NSW on 30^th June 2025, QLD on 7^th July 2025, VIC on 21^st July 2025, and SA on 28^th July 2025.

How much volume has been traded?

From launch through to yesterday afternoon, cumulative traded volume stands at just 58 contracts across the Evening Peak futures — across all four regions — and zero contracts across the Morning Peak futures.

For Evening Peaks, 42 contracts have been traded for the NSW region, followed by QLD (9), SA (4), and VIC (3). The most active individual tenor was for NSW 2025 Q4 (12 contracts), follow by NSW 2026 Q1 and Q2 (10 contracts each).

Traded Volume Across all Morning and Evening Peak Contracts (Tenors 2025-Q3 onwards).

From June 30^th 2025 to March 5^th 2026.

Source: NEMreview

The table below shows volumes traded for the strip variant for completeness.

Traded Volume Across all Strips over Morning and Evening Peak Contracts (Tenors FY2026 onwards).

From June 30^th 2025 to March 5^th 2026.

Source: NEMreview

To put those numbers into context against traditional contracts, just quarterly NSW baseload futures traded 49,725 contracts over the same period (for tenors Q3 2025 onwards).

With volumes still at negligible levels roughly eight months after launch, the need for a liquidity catalyst was one of the topics of discussion at the ASX Energy’s recent Power Symposium in Sydney (which our own Paul McArdle presented at). In recent months, the exchange have stated that they are in negotiations with two potential market makers to help boost liquidity.