regional nsw — NSW1

The NSW spot price sits at $71.30/MWh as of 06:30 AEST, demand at 6,280 MW — a notable lift from the $37–$57/MWh range that dominated the overnight trough between 02:00 and 06:00 AEST. The evening ramp has driven this uplift, with the last six intervals all settling above $70/MWh, peaking at $81.55/MWh at 06:15 AEST. The 24-hour session has been volatile: near-zero prints as low as $0.87/MWh appeared in the early morning, and a spike to $143.01/MWh occurred briefly around 08:45 AEST yesterday evening. The overall price trajectory today has tracked a textbook Sunday demand curve — soft overnight, firming through the morning peak, then easing through the afternoon before climbing again into the post-sunset window.

The generation mix is dominated by black coal at 3,705 MW, accounting for roughly 86% of in-region output at the latest trading interval (06:00 AEST). Hydro contributes 286 MW and wind 212 MW, with solar near negligible at 10 MW — consistent with post-sunset conditions. Both gas CCGT and OCGT are offline at this interval. Total renewable penetration sits at 12.05%, up from a daytime low of 6.8% recorded around 02:00 AEST when solar was absent and wind output was reduced. Carbon intensity is 0.7739 tCO2/MWh, tracking below the session high of 0.8202 tCO2/MWh seen mid-afternoon as coal ran harder into lower solar periods.

Predispatch forecasts point to a material price pullback from current levels. The 07:00 AEST interval (21:00 UTC) is consistently forecast at $57.06–$68.18/MWh across the latest predispatch runs, with the most recent forecast (issued 06:01 AEST) at $68.18/MWh — edging up as the actual settlement period approaches. The 07:30 AEST interval drops sharply to the low $40s, with the latest forecast at $41.19/MWh, suggesting the evening peak has substantially cleared and prices will ease into the overnight period. Load window data supports this: from 08:00 AEST onwards, near-zero and negative prices are forecast across most intervals through to the early hours of tomorrow morning as overnight demand falls away.

Two market notices remain active and directly relevant to NSW flows today. First, AEMO issued an inter-regional transfer limit variation at 02:40 AEST today (notice 140921) following an unplanned outage of the Larcom Creek–Calliope River 8859 275kV line in Queensland at 02:32 AEST, invoking constraint set Q-LCCP_8859 which binds on the NSW1-QLD1 and N-Q-MNSP1 interconnectors — this limits northbound transfer capacity from NSW into QLD and remains active. Second, a negative settlement residue constraint on the NSW-to-VIC directional interconnector (NRM_NSW1_VIC1) was invoked at 14:05 AEST yesterday and subsequently cancelled at 15:00 AEST; while no longer binding, it signals that the VIC1-NSW1 flow direction generated sufficient resid