Regional Outlook — QLD1 — Thursday 30 April 2026

The Queensland spot price sits at $76.06/MWh at 06:30 AEST, with total demand at 6,655 MW — a moderate post-peak load level as the morning ramps down from today's earlier high of 7,940 MW reached around 18:00 AEST. Prices have followed a textbook daily curve: overnight intervals collapsed into sub-$5/MWh and negative territory between approximately 01:30–04:15 AEST, before climbing sharply through the morning peak to a session high of $94.99/MWh at 23:10 AEST. The current $76.06/MWh sits comfortably in line with the sustained $70–$85/MWh band that characterised the bulk of the morning trading period, and represents a significant premium to the deep overnight lows. The 24-hour average sits in the mid-to-high $40s/MWh when overnight suppression is factored in.

The generation mix is heavily weighted to black coal, which is contributing 2,313 MW — the dominant fuel source by a wide margin. Hydro is providing 87 MW, gas OCGT output is negligible at 0.06 MW, and solar is at zero given the current pre-dawn conditions (data reflects the 06:00 AEST trading interval). Renewable penetration sits at just 3.61%, reflecting the overnight/early morning window where solar is absent and wind contribution is minimal. This compares to a daytime trough in renewables seen through the 10:00–14:00 AEST window where the renewable percentage held around 3.2–3.5%, before the carbon intensity history shows renewables peaking at 21% around 09:00–09:15 AEST overnight. Carbon intensity is currently 0.8482 tCO2/MWh, consistent with the sustained 0.848–0.853 tCO2/MWh range that has prevailed since the morning demand ramp began — well above the overnight low of 0.695 tCO2/MWh seen when renewable penetration was at its highest.

Predispatch forecasts for the next two intervals point to prices of $74.24/MWh at 07:00 AEST and $73.63/MWh at 07:30 AEST, suggesting a mild easing from current levels rather than any sharp move. The forward curve has been oscillating between $64.65/MWh and $75/MWh across most predispatch runs today, with no model consensus pointing to a price spike for the coming hours. As solar generation begins to contribute through the mid-morning period today — the daily weather outlook projects average solar potential of 9.5 across daylight hours with roughly 51% cloud cover and a maximum temperature of 23.8°C — demand is unlikely to spike significantly given the mild autumn conditions (current temperature 16.1°C, minimal cooling demand).

The most operationally relevant active notice for Queensland is the QNI interconnector restriction (Market Notice 144013), where constraint set I-QN_550 remains invoked following the outage of the Armidale–Sapphire 8E 330 kV line. This outage is scheduled to remain in place until 17:00 AEST on 2 May 2026, constraining northward flows on the NSW1–QLD1 interconnector. This limits Queensland's ability to import from NSW during any supply tightness