Interconnector Watch: Thursday 30 April 2026

Interconnector conditions at 06:30 AEST reflect a market shaped by three binding links and a live network constraint. VIC-NSW (VIC1-NSW1) is carrying 987.7 MW northward from Victoria into New South Wales and is binding at its export limit of 987.63 MW — effectively at full capacity in this direction. This flow is consistent with Victoria's spot price of $29.11/MWh sitting well below NSW's $79.00/MWh; the $49.89/MWh spread is large enough to saturate the link, with the binding constraint preventing further arbitrage. Heywood (V-SA) is flowing 345.4 MW westward from Victoria into South Australia and sits just above its import limit of -345.26 MW, placing it at the margin of binding — any incremental load shift could tip it fully constrained. SA's spot price of -$3.00/MWh against Victoria's $29.11/MWh indicates the westward flow is already compressing SA prices into negative territory, and Heywood is absorbing as much of that surplus as its current limit allows.

On QNI (NSW1-QLD1), 268.85 MW is flowing southward from Queensland into NSW and the link is binding at its import limit. Critically, this is not a market-driven ceiling — constraint set I-QN_550 is active due to the ongoing outage of the Armidale–Sapphire 8E 330 kV line, which has further restricted QNI transfer capacity since 29 April. The outage is scheduled to remain in place until 17:00 AEST on 2 May. Under normal topology, the $2.94/MWh price differential between QLD ($76.06/MWh) and NSW ($79.00/MWh) would support modest southward flow, but the constrained limit is the operative ceiling here rather than the price signal alone. Murraylink (V-S-MNSP1) is carrying 139.62 MW from SA into Victoria and is binding at both its import and export limits — consistent with the interconnector operating at a firm scheduled capacity, likely as a market network service provider dispatch. The binding status on Murraylink means no additional SA surplus can flow east via this link despite the negative SA price.

Basslink (T-V-MNSP1) is flowing 214.23 MW southward from Victoria into Tasmania at 06:30 AEST, utilising 58.6% of its import limit of -365.32 MW and is not binding. Tasmania's $86.14/MWh price is the highest in the NEM, sitting $57.03/MWh above Victoria's $29.11/MWh — a spread that would ordinarily drive northward flow from Tasmania into Victoria. The current southward direction into Tasmania indicates Tasmanian dispatch dynamics, likely hydro scheduling or storage considerations, are overriding the price gradient, and the link has headroom of approximately 151 MW before reaching its import limit. The DirectConnect link N-Q-MNSP1 (Directlink, NSW-QLD) is carrying just 9 MW southward into NSW, well within its limits and not binding, consistent with QNI handling the bulk of the Queensland-NSW transfer.

In summary, three of six monitored interconnectors are binding — VIC-NSW at full northward export, QNI constrained by network outage, and Murraylink at its scheduled limit — which is sustaining the pronounced price spread