Regional Outlook — QLD1 — Wednesday 29 April 2026

Queensland's spot price sits at $70.96/MWh at 06:35 AEST, with total demand at 6,741 MW and climbing through the morning peak. The 24-hour price profile tells a clear story: overnight intervals from roughly 23:30 to 04:30 AEST repeatedly printed at or below zero — touching as low as -$2.77/MWh — before a sharp ramp through the pre-dawn period pushed prices into the $35–$50/MWh range by 15:30 AEST and above $70/MWh by 05:35 AEST as demand surged past 7,800 MW at the morning peak. The current price represents a normalisation from that peak, with demand easing back from its 07:40 AEST high of approximately 7,855 MW.

The generation mix at the most recent interval (06:15 AEST) is heavily weighted to black coal at 2,282 MW, with hydro contributing 86.5 MW and gas OCGT at a negligible 0.06 MW. Solar is offline, consistent with the pre-dawn data window. Renewable penetration sits at just 3.65% — well below the overnight peak of approximately 22% when wind was contributing and demand was low. Carbon intensity is 0.8479 tCO2/MWh, near the top of today's range; the overnight low reached approximately 0.687 tCO2/MWh when renewable penetration was higher. Today's weather outlook — 54% average cloud cover, a maximum of 22.2°C, and moderate solar potential of 7.3 — should allow solar generation to build through the morning and push both renewable penetration and carbon intensity toward more moderate levels by midday, consistent with the pattern seen in the price history where midday intervals softened to the low-to-mid $50s/MWh.

Predispatch forecasts point to prices in the $72–$73/MWh band for the 07:00 AEST interval, with the most recent forecast run targeting $72.83/MWh. The 07:30 AEST target interval carries a forecast of $72.83/MWh from multiple recent runs, suggesting dispatchers are pricing in sustained demand support through the remainder of the morning peak before solar generation begins to suppress midday prices — a trajectory consistent with the overnight predispatch signals that have been converging upward from initial estimates near $55–$65/MWh. Load optimisation windows from 08:30 to 10:30 AEST are flagged as excellent, with overnight and early-morning interval prices forecast well below current levels.

Two network notices are active and relevant to Queensland. The QNI interconnector remains restricted under constraint set I-QN_550 due to the ongoing outage of the Armidale–Sapphire 8E 330 kV line, which is scheduled to remain out until 02 May; this limits Queensland's southward export capacity to NSW and is a structural factor supporting current price levels. Separately, AEMO issued and then cancelled a contingency reclassification for the Tumoulin–Woree 275 kV and Chalumbin–Turkinje 132 kV lines in northern Queensland overnight — reclassified as credible at 00:17 AEST due to lightning activity, then reverted to non-credible at 01:19 AEST once the storm cleared. No constraint sets were inv