Regional Outlook — QLD1

The Queensland spot price sits at $71.75/MWh as of 06:35 AEST, with demand at 5,734 MW. That price level is consistent with where QLD has traded through most of the daytime window — the 24-hour profile shows a sharp overnight trough between roughly 07:15 and 14:30 AEST where prices repeatedly printed at or near $0/MWh, and brief negative spikes as deep as -$2.49/MWh around 14:10–14:20 AEST, before stepping up firmly through the morning ramp from ~$32/MWh at 15:30 AEST to the current $71–72/MWh band that has held since approximately 18:00 AEST. The current price represents a $7.10/MWh premium over where QLD opened the overnight session, reflecting the typical late-evening demand lift.

The generation mix at the most recent dispatch interval (06:30 AEST) is heavily weighted to black coal at 2,333 MW, with hydro contributing 85.89 MW and gas OCGT at a negligible 0.06 MW. Solar output is zero, consistent with nighttime conditions. Renewable penetration sits at just 3.55% — the overnight minimum for the region. This is a marked contrast to the daytime profile captured in the carbon history, where renewables reached a peak of approximately 25.5% around 09:30 AEST as rooftop and utility solar contributed during daylight hours. Carbon intensity currently sits at 0.8488 tCO2/MWh, near the top of today's range; the daytime low reached 0.6553 tCO2/MWh at 09:30 AEST when renewable penetration was highest.

Predispatch forecasts signal a meaningful price step-down from the current $71.75/MWh level as overnight conditions deepen. The 07:00 AEST half-hour is forecast at approximately $64.83/MWh, and the 07:30 AEST half-hour at roughly $29–$31/MWh — consistent with the same overnight pattern observed across the prior 24 hours, where low overnight demand intersects with thermal baseload running through minimum generation levels. Load window data reinforces this, with optimal windows from approximately 07:30–10:00 AEST (08:30–11:00 local) showing forecast prices ranging from -$25/MWh to -$13/MWh — the deepest negative windows align with the period when solar generation will begin building and suppress spot prices, as it did this morning. Demand-side participants and battery operators should note this as the primary arbitrage window today.

On market notices: the most operationally relevant QLD notice is the contingency reclassification of the Mudgeeraba–Terranora 110 kV double circuit (No. 757 and No. 758), which has been toggled between credible and non-credible status multiple times over the past 36 hours due to intermittent lightning activity in the Gold Coast/northern NSW border zone. The most recent action (Market Notice 143504, issued 12:14 AEST) cancelled the credible classification, reverting to non-credible — no constraint sets are currently invoked on those lines. Separately, the Newcastle–Eraring 330 kV line in NSW (constraint set N-ERNC_93) returned to service at