Regional Outlook — VIC1 — Monday 4 May 2026

The spot price in Victoria sits at $70.15/MWh at 06:35 AEST, with demand at 5,108 MW — squarely in the evening ramp. That $70.15 print is the tail of a sustained evening peak that saw prices climb from around $57/MWh at 19:05 AEST through to a high of $80.12/MWh at 20:30 AEST before easing slightly. The contrast with the overnight period is stark: prices ran deeply negative for most of the midnight-to-dawn window, touching -$12.10/MWh on multiple intervals, driven by surplus wind and low overnight demand bottoming near 3,800 MW. The 24-hour price profile is therefore heavily bifurcated — sub-zero for six-plus hours through the small hours, then a sharp escalation from 19:00 AEST onward as solar output went to zero and demand climbed above 4,500 MW.

The current generation mix (06:30 AEST snapshot) shows brown coal supplying 1,435 MW, wind at 900 MW, gas OCGT at 135 MW, hydro at 33 MW, solar at zero, and gas CCGT offline. Renewables are contributing 37.3% of the mix at this interval, down markedly from overnight peaks near 58–59% when wind was high and demand was light. Carbon intensity sits at 0.734 tCO2/MWh — the highest point of the 24-hour period — consistent with the evening shift toward thermal generation as wind contribution softens and solar is absent. Earlier in the overnight period, intensity reached a low of around 0.473–0.483 tCO2/MWh when renewable penetration exceeded 58%. Weather conditions are not helping solar recovery today: 87% cloud cover, 12.9°C, and a solar potential score of effectively zero for the current hour, with the day's outlook showing average solar potential of only 0.7 for the full date.

Predispatch forecasts are flagging a significant step up from current levels. The 07:00 AEST (21:00 UTC) half-hour is forecast at $90.50/MWh, with the 07:30 AEST period tracking at $94–$95/MWh across multiple predispatch runs. The most recent run at 06:01 AEST (20:01 UTC) shows $90.50/MWh for the 07:00 period and $94/MWh for 07:30. From 08:00 AEST onward, forecasts moderate toward the $57–$82/MWh range as overnight demand falls. Prices are not expected to revisit negative territory until well after midnight AEST tonight, with the 09:00–10:00 AEST window (23:00–00:00 UTC) forecast in the low-to-mid $40s, easing further into the $8–$22/MWh range through 11:00–12:00 AEST as overnight demand drops and wind generation holds.

One active market notice has direct relevance to interconnector flows touching Victoria: an unplanned outage on the No. 3 Leg of Directlink (NSW–QLD) invoked constraint set N-MBTE_1 at 02:30 AEST today, restricting transfer capacity on the N-Q-MNSP1 interconn