Regional Outlook — QLD1: Friday 17 April 2026
The Queensland spot price sits at $77.94/MWh at 06:30 AEST, well below the $85–104/MWh range that dominated the morning peak between 07:00 and 09:00 AEST. Demand stands at 5,939 MW, having eased from a morning peak above 8,200 MW. Prices tracked near zero or negative in the overnight trough (08:30–11:30 AEST UTC+10 equivalent, i.e. 22:30–01:30 AEST), with multiple intervals printing at $0/MWh or below, before climbing sharply into the morning peak. The current $77.94/MWh level reflects a post-peak softening as demand retreats toward mid-evening levels.
The generation mix is dominated by black coal at 2,847.75 MW, with hydro contributing 86.16 MW, gas OCGT at a near-negligible 0.06 MW, and solar at 0.3 MW — reflecting that this is a post-sunset snapshot. Renewable penetration sits at just 2.95% and carbon intensity is 0.8541 tCO2/MWh, which is consistent with where the region has been since sunrise ended solar contributions earlier today. Through the overnight window, renewables reached as high as 23.2% and carbon intensity dipped to 0.676 tCO2/MWh, illustrating the scale of the solar drop-off through the morning peak hours. The generation data reflects only dispatched plant reported to the market; behind-the-meter rooftop solar is not captured in these figures.
Predispatch forecasts point to a step-up in price for the next trading interval. The 07:00 AEST predispatch run (20:00 UTC) targets $87.37/MWh for the 07:00 AEST half-hour, with the 07:30 AEST interval forecast at $69.97/MWh in the most recent run — suggesting a brief spike before prices soften again into the late evening. Earlier predispatch runs issued across the day had the 07:00 AEST interval ranging from $82.55/MWh to $110.63/MWh, with the forecast converging downward as actual dispatch played out. Load window data confirms that prices are expected to turn sharply negative from 08:00 AEST onward through to around 15:30 AEST, with intervals printing as low as −$22.94/MWh around 13:00 AEST — consistent with high overnight solar generation once the sun rises on Saturday.
The one active market notice of direct relevance to Queensland interconnector flows is the inter-regional transfer notice (141113) regarding the Tarrone to Heywood/APD 500 kV line outage in Victoria, which invoked constraint set V-HYTR and placed equations on the NSW1-QLD1 interconnector LHS. This constraint remains active and has the potential to limit northward or southward power flows between Queensland and NSW depending on dispatch conditions. Traders should also note the upcoming MSATS outage on 26 April 2026 from 10:00–14:00 AEST (CHG0108549), which will affect meter data access and B2B transactions but has no real-time dispatch impact today.