Regional Outlook — SA1 — Thursday 30 April 2026
The spot price in South Australia sits at -$3/MWh as of 6:30 AEST, with total demand at 1,447 MW. Negative pricing has been the dominant condition across most of the past 24 hours — the region spent extended periods in negative territory from around 8:00 AEST through to the current interval, with the notable exception of a sharp morning ramp between approximately 16:05 and 18:30 AEST where prices climbed from $51.70 to a session high of $145.12/MWh at 17:45 AEST before retreating. The overnight trough reached as low as -$11.86/MWh in the early hours, reflecting supply well in excess of regional demand during low-load periods.
The current generation mix is dominated by wind at 988 MW, with gas-fired CCGT contributing 113 MW and OCGT and solar both at zero output. Wind accounts for the vast majority of the dispatch stack at this hour, consistent with the overnight and early morning pattern. Renewable penetration sits at 89.69%, and carbon intensity is 0.0505 tCO2/MWh — well below the daily peak of 0.1399 tCO2/MWh recorded during the morning demand ramp when greater gas dispatch was required. Cloud cover is 99% with negligible solar potential, so solar will contribute little to the generation mix today; wind potential is rated 6.9 and is forecast to strengthen materially over coming days.
Predispatch forecasts for the 7:00 and 7:30 AEST trading intervals point to prices recovering to slightly above zero, in the range of -$1 to +$0.42/MWh, before forward windows from approximately 8:30 to 12:00 AEST show a return to negative or near-zero prices in the range of -$3 to -$6/MWh during early morning low-demand hours. The deeper negative windows clustered around the 10:30–12:00 AEST block (UTC 00:30–02:00) show forecast prices as low as -$20/MWh, suggesting continued surplus supply through the mid-morning period before any meaningful demand recovery. The price trajectory implies no material tightness in SA through the early part of today.
The most relevant active market notice for SA is the prior Forecast LOR1 condition declared for 18:00–20:30 AEST on 28 April (Market Notice 144006), which has since been cancelled per Notice 144007 — no active reserve adequacy concerns are flagged for SA today. A non-conformance notice is active for NSW unit BW03 (05:10–05:15 AEST today, -80 MW, constraint NC-N_BW03), which has no direct SA impact. The QNI interconnector restriction (constraint I-QN_550) related to the Armidale–Sapphire 330 kV line outage remains in force until 02 May and continues to limit NSW–QLD transfer capability, with flow-on implications for interconnector-assisted price arbitrage across the NEM but no direct SA constraint invoked. Traders should note the DWGM planned maintenance outage scheduled for 06 May, affecting gas market systems with no immediate SA electricity market impact today.