Regional Outlook — QLD1: Saturday 4 April 2026
The Queensland spot price sits at $64.83/MWh as of 06:30 AEST, with total demand at 5,631 MW. That current level is broadly in line with the morning peak that pushed prices into the $66–$77/MWh range between 17:30 and 20:15 AEST. The day's price trajectory was striking: QLD ran deeply negative — reaching as low as -$6.54/MWh — through the overnight trough from roughly 07:25 to 13:00 AEST, before demand climbed back through the afternoon and evening to lift prices into the $50–$77/MWh band. The 24-hour volume-weighted average across the price history sits in the low-to-mid $40s/MWh, meaning the current $64.83/MWh represents a meaningful premium to the daily mean.
The generation mix at the latest interval is dominated by black coal at 2,461.65 MW, with hydro contributing 85.83 MW, solar at 2.6 MW, and gas OCGT at just 0.16 MW. Total reported generation in the mix sits around 2,550 MW against metered demand of 5,631 MW, indicating substantial generation not captured in this snapshot — likely wind, additional solar, and gas units. Renewable penetration is reported at just 3.47% in the current interval, consistent with the post-sunset period; earlier in the day, renewables reached 22% during the midday window when negative prices prevailed, confirming solar output was a key driver of the overnight-to-midday price suppression.
Carbon intensity stands at 0.8495 tCO2/MWh, at the upper end of today's range. The intensity was materially lower during the overnight and midday periods — dropping to 0.685–0.712 tCO2/MWh when renewable penetration was higher — but has risen steadily since around 08:30 AEST as solar output fades and black coal carries more of the load. Sustainability-focused market participants should note that the current interval represents today's highest intensity reading.
On the forward curve, predispatch forecasts for the 07:00 AEST interval (21:00 UTC) are converging tightly around $53–$54/MWh, and the 07:30 AEST interval is forecast in the $37–$40/MWh range, suggesting prices are expected to ease as demand softens into the late evening. The most operationally significant active market notice is the inter-regional transfer limit variation (Notice 140921): an unplanned outage of the Larcom Creek–Calliope River 8859 275kV line occurred at 02:32 AEST today, with constraint set Q-LCCP_8859 invoked at 02:40 AEST, affecting the NSW1-QLD1 interconnector on the LHS. This constraint remains active and has the potential to limit northward flows into QLD or southward exports, depending on dispatch conditions — traders should monitor interconnector headroom closely through the morning. A series of NER clause 3.9.2B manifestly incorrect inputs reviews across daytime intervals (08:00–13:20 AEST) were largely confirmed unchanged, posing no material settlement risk.