regional vic — VIC1

Victoria's spot price sits at $31.23/MWh at 06:30 AEST, with total demand at 5,827 MW — up sharply from the overnight trough where prices spent several hours in negative territory, bottoming below -$60/MWh during the early morning solar and wind surplus period. The price trajectory through the 24-hour window tells a clear story: sustained negatives through the 10:00–19:00 AEST window as renewables flooded the grid, followed by a predictable evening demand ramp that has now lifted prices into positive territory. The intraday average across the price history sits well below $10/MWh, making the current $31.23/MWh read a meaningful step up as evening load builds.

Wind is doing the heavy lifting at 1,707 MW, with brown coal providing a firm 1,213 MW baseload floor and gas OCGT contributing a marginal 105 MW of top-up. Solar is at zero given the overnight data window, and hydro is holding steady at just 42 MW. Renewables are contributing 57.03% of generation, with carbon intensity at 0.5047 tCO2/MWh — a notable improvement from the 0.90+ tCO2/MWh readings recorded during the previous evening's peak when the brown coal share was proportionally much higher against weaker wind output.

Predispatch forecasts are pointing to $30.28–$31.54/MWh for the 07:00 AEST trading period, indicating prices are consolidating in the low-to-mid $30s/MWh range as the morning demand ramp continues. The forecast profile is stable across multiple dispatch runs, suggesting no imminent material price spike, though the load windows data flags excellent battery and flexible load opportunities from 07:30 AEST onward with prices expected to ease back toward $8.95/MWh and lower into negative territory again through the morning solar window — consistent with yesterday's pattern of deep negatives between 10:00 and 18:00 AEST.

On the network side, the Yallourn–Rowville 7 and 8 220 kV lines were reclassified as a credible contingency twice across the day due to lightning activity, with the most recent reclassification issued at 00:24 AEST and subsequently cancelled at 00:24 AEST (Market Notices 137375 and 137376). The constraint set V-ROYP78_R_N-2 carried no interconnector flows on the left-hand side, limiting direct market impact, but traders should note that storm activity in the Latrobe Valley corridor produced repeated contingency flag cycling across the period — a transmission risk profile worth monitoring heading into the weekend if further convective weather is forecast near Yallourn infrastructure.